


in•somnia

by myystic (neoinean)



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Community: Suitsmeme, Early in Canon, Five Plus One, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Male Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-26
Updated: 2011-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-23 02:36:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neoinean/pseuds/myystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Harvey only mostly fails at that whole "not caring" thing, and one time he fails <em>spectacularly</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompt on the kink meme: "five times Harvey found Mike asleep and woke him up plus one time he let him be"

The first time it’s a Sunday morning, early. The kid’s been with the firm all of a month, and Harvey still hasn't been convinced that hiring him isn't going to turn out to be the biggest mistake of his career. Though to be fair, the kid really _is_ as brilliant as he’d claimed to be, is perhaps the brightest star Harvey has ever seen this side of a mirror, but the difference between genius and insanity is disclaimed only in the finest of the fine print and Harvey, to his ( _alleged_ ) everlasting shame, is already well on his way to realizing that he hadn’t thought the whole thing through even half as well as he likely should have. After all, if “genius” is the kid’s defense...

It really doesn’t take a law degree to figure what comes next. Though, the look on Jessica’s face would really be something to see.

...Right before she hauls him up before the Bar, of course, and therein lies the problem.

And no, it really doesn’t help that Harvey is quite well aware of his _reasons_ for hiring Mike, or that he _has been_ and from just about word one (say what you will of his flaws, but self-denial has never been one of them) because at the end of the day he still knows exactly how much the fact that he can say _why_ he’d signed on the dotted line -- when everything he knows about cost/benefit and risk assessment had been all but screaming at him to do the very opposite -- will _not_ save him when the jig is up and suddenly it's time to face the music. Insane? Definitely ( _Your Honor_ ), but hardly lacking informed consent, and that right there, ladies and gentlemen ( _of the jury_ ) is the wrinkle that’s been keeping him up nights.

Not that he’ll admit it, of course. He’s never violated a non-disclosure _in his life_ , and he’s certainly not about to start with one of his own.

So the fact that he’s pulling into the office garage at 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning really has everything to do with wanting to triple-check that he’s prepared for his ten o’clock client brunch and absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Mike nearly blew it last Friday afternoon because he so obviously didn’t know what Louis meant when he said he used to make fun of the poor schlubs who had to “take the T”. Thankfully Louis had been too busy enjoying his stroll down memory lane to notice when Mike stopped tracking the conversation -- or that Harvey’s timely interruption had been exactly that -- because right now Louis’ interest in Mike is based solely on the fact that Mike is ostensibly Harvey’s responsibility, and it goes without saying that the last thing they need is for the rat-faced little weasel to take an interest in the kid for his own sake.

Well, _mostly_ without saying. He’d reminded Mike that Harvard University doesn’t exist in a vacuum (“for Christ’s sake -- just what the hell did you _do_ out there when you weren’t conning your way into the guided tour?”) and ordered him to study up on every last part of eastern Mass between the 128 belt and Cape Cod Canal, but that had been the end of it.

And if he _also_ banished him to records to put together a summary of former partner Avram Cohen’s client dealings, hire date to retire date, so that Harvey could figure out which ones to make a play for and which he should let slide? Well that was just to keep the kid out of trouble until he could tell the difference between Harvard Square and Harvard Yard.

So Sunday morning, technically, but still Saturday night for everyone who a) hasn’t gone to bed yet and b) doesn’t give a good God damn, and Harvey is on his way to his office, wondering what the hell he’s going to do once he gets there because of course he brought all relevant weekend work home with him already -- and trying his level best to forget the fact that Mike is already on record as having no problems playing the blackmail card should Harvey ever decide it's time to cut his losses. And if he takes a stroll past the cube farm along the way? Well that’s just down to morbid curiosity, really. After all, his night’s already a wash -- why not see if anyone else’s is, too.

Really, it’s not like he’s actually _looking_ for Mike ( _he so solemnly swears_ ), but the fact that the kid’s suit jacket is still slung over the back of his chair is--

Well. It just _is_ , and Harvey’s curiosity is piqued. It’s not like Mike has an abundance of good suits to go around, nor is he the forgetful sort, so -- what gives?

A gut feeling (almost but not exactly like the chronic indigestion he’s been nursing on and off these past four weeks) sends him down to records, and even if the long, dark, _deserted_ hallway is downright _creepy_ this late at night, the light spilling out under the second to last door on the left is evidence enough to lure him onward.

He doesn’t bother knocking, just barges right on in -- only to be brought up short by what he sees. Namely his associate: sleeves unbuttoned and rolled up, tie painfully discarded on the floor (and _note to self: add “learn to properly care for silk apparel” to Mike’s homework pile_ ), head pillowed on his arms atop a veritable nest of old Avram’s color-coded notes, and completely _dead to the world_. And even though its 2:46 a.m. on a Sunday morning, Harvey still comes face to face with his own surprise.

And -- you know? He really shouldn’t. He knows that. Mike is human after all, and lord knows all the lesser mortals need to sleep at some point, but it’s just so thoroughly incongruous: Mike Ross and stillness. He’s almost certain he’s never seen the like before. Closest would be the few seconds at a stretch where Mike will freeze up, all deer-in-headlights _performance art_ , but it never lasts longer that it takes to betray the reaction, and the kid always rebounds almost twice as hard as the original bounding had been, metaphorically speaking.

Well, _mostly_ metaphorical, anyway. Harvey still hasn’t found the proper label for that side-stepping shuffle Mike pulls off whenever he wants to walk and talk at the same time and to someone ( _pleading the fifth_ ) trying to outpace him without actually looking like they’re running away. But the point still stands.

And right now, seeing someone who’s normally overflowing with restless energy just -- _not_ \-- is creepy on a level that leaves the effects of the hallway standing, good reason or no. And it might be cruel, but then letting the kid spend the night in that position would be worse, to Harvey’s mind, and that’s how he justifies what he’s about to do.

The slamming door echoes like a gunshot in the confined space, and Mike shoots up and out of the chair like his own ass had been on the business end of it. Harvey winces (involuntary tick) when Mike inevitably fails at finding his feet in all the mad scramble, but then he’s bouncing back up to vertical again so quickly that for a second Harvey actually wonders if he hadn’t just imagined the tumble in the first place.

“Oh crap,” Mike’s saying, over and over like a fraying tape stuck on fast-forward, and Harvey knows he should interrupt -- the kid is moving so fast he’s almost vibrating, and that really can’t be healthy -- but the Mike Ross show is _fascinating_ , and he catches himself wondering how long the kid can go before he gives in and takes a breath.

“I have notes,” Mike says, even as he shuffles the papers he’d so recently been sleeping on. “ _Lots_ of notes. And I know it says that Cohen’s been here since October of ‘89, but I couldn’t get my hands on anything dated prior to June of ‘93, so I don’t have anything older -- and I know you said you wanted a _complete_ history, but apparently they lock the doors at night--”

“Mike.” Because fascinating is all well and good, but really, it’s not like he has _all night_.

“--and I’m pretty sure they’d fire me for trying to pick the lock, so I was going to call and ask -- I _was_ \-- but it was the middle of the night--”

“ _Mike_.” Louder this time, because the kid is wrist-deep in paper and still doesn’t seem to need to come up for air, and _fascinating_ has tipped right on over into _disturbing_ \-- what, was the kid an _auctioneer_ in a past life, or something?

“--and I know I screwed up, but I swear I didn’t mean to sleep this late.” And now he’s got a stack of paper, half an inch thick, pulled up and held close in like a shield, but for his part Harvey has given up on verbal cues entirely and instead is marching right around the conference table. Hopefully planting himself squarely in Mike’s line of sight will trip some kind of babble kill-switch, and if not, well at least he’ll be close enough to catch the idiot when he finally passes out from lack of oxygen. A fainting associate he can deal with, if he must, but only because it’s the lesser evil compared to a _concussed_ associate, which is what he’ll have on his hands if the fall goes off as scripted.

“And I _know_ I set my phone alarm, but--” now Mike turns, and his mistake is in thinking Harvey is still standing in the doorway, because when he looks up he’s so obviously not expecting him to be looming inside arm’s reach -- and so much for Harvey’s hopes of finally gaining the upper hand, because Mike’s response to the unexpected proximity is to _flinch like a startled rabbit_ , his arms rising in a wild flail that sends all his notes raining down around his feet because in that moment his hands had better things to do than maintain their grip, and before Harvey can even _begin_ to question just where the hell the reflex came from, Mike’s squeaking out:

“Am I fired?” and it’s only a decade’s worth of fielding surprise witnesses that keeps Harvey from, well, his best ‘startled Mike’ impression. And _speaking of_ \--

Eyes wide, pupils blown, and any other day Harvey might have sworn that Mike was high, but he’s been around the block enough to know what _panic_ looks like, especially when its owner is trying his damnedest not to let it off the leash, and all at once he’s struck with the sudden rush -- how easy it would be to break the kid. Right here, right now, and just one word and he would get to watch Mike Ross shatter into a million pieces. That type of power -- holding it, wielding it, _owning_ it -- is part and parcel of why Harvey Specter became a lawyer in the first place.

But -- it’s nearly three a.m, and Harvey is just about dead on his feet, and the reality of his associate deciding that _duck and cover_ is the better part of valor when confronted with a sudden invasion of his personal space is shock enough to stop him cold.

Not that he's about to do anything he’ll ever have cause to regret -- if nothing else, Mike is far too useful for Harvey to cast aside solely to feed his own ego -- but still he finds himself softening his approach, just a little bit.

“You really are an idiot,” he says, but the tone is so far from the words themselves that Mike’s brain actually stutters as it tries to process it (that’s the best explanation Harvey’s got for the rapid double blink followed by three full seconds of _absolutely nothing at all_ ) but then Mike’s drawing in a deeper breath and Harvey knows better than to let him get started up again.

“One, with our own history, more recent is almost always more relevant. Two, there’s a clock above the door. Check it next time before you jump to conclusions.”

Predictably, Mike looks up, and Harvey really hopes the kid does not play poker because right now his face is bringing new meaning to the term ‘an open book.’ Chagrin does not even _begin_ to cover it.

“And three, voluntary overtime is only a firing offense when it proves you’re incapable of getting things done during actual business hours.”

Mike blinks, and blushes even deeper, and looks down at his feet -- and heaves such a sigh that it's a wonder his whole body doesn’t deflate right along with it. Then he’s squatting down to gather the strewn papers Harvey had all but forgotten about. And it’s a near thing, but he does manage to resist the almost foreign impulse to take a knee and help him out.

“Speaking of business hours,” Mike says to the floor, but Harvey cuts the budding question off at the knees.

“I have brunch meeting this morning.”

“Uh, correct me if I’m wrong--”

“I always do.”

“--but isn’t brunch served _after_ breakfast?” Mike peers up at Harvey as he asks, and the exaggerated difference of height the vantage point gives him makes the bags underneath Mike’s eyes stand out in sharp relief against his too-pale skin. It makes him look like a raccoon. A _disheveled_ raccoon. Possibly with rabies.

“Cute,” he says, enjoying his own irony, but despite his observations he willingly sticks out a hand. Mike latches on, and Harvey hauls him to his feet. Mike sways a bit, and Harvey almost asks after the last time he ate. Kid looks underfed at the best of times, and neck deep into what’s likely his second straight all-nighter is anything but. “Realized I forgot a file,” he says once he’s reasonably sure he’s not going to have to catch a fainting associate after all.

“And you were thinking about client files at three a.m?”

“ _One_ a.m,” he lies, because image is everything and it's not like Mike can call him on it. “And then I figured, while I’m here...”

“You’d -- what? Take a stroll through the basement?”

“Well, I wanted to visit Hoffa, but then I saw your light on.”

Mike snorts, a little chuff of laughter, and drags a hand across his face to mask the yawn that follows immediately thereafter. It drives home the fact that yeah, it really _is_ passed three a.m. and Harvey still hasn’t been to bed yet. The thought makes him ache in the annoying little way that likes to remind him how he’s standing on the wrong side of 35.

“C’mon,” he says, and turns to go without actually waiting to see if Mike will fall in line. Thankfully someone else already taught the boy to heel.

“But--” Of course there’s a but. Not that he isn’t following, but it’s apparently too much to hope that he’d follow silently.

“You have your notes?”

“Yeah, but--”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Mike blinks again. He seems to do that a lot when he’s tired. Harvey makes a note to keep that in mind. And before the kid can recover he’s already led them out the door.

“Since I’m pretty sure you just locked the door behind us, I’m gonna go with ‘nothing.’”

In the Stygian the darkness of the hallway Harvey actually lets himself grin. “Good answer,” he says, and claps a hand on Mike’s shoulder. All the better to steer him with, since he’s not willing to trust that eidetic memory includes a human GPS.

They make their slow and careful way back to the elevators, and from there it's a quick ride up to their floor and its subdued but still mercifully present nocturnal lighting. Harvey unlocks his office so Mike can set his notes on the desk, and that’s everything to do with the relative safety of his office versus the relative _calamity_ that trusting it to Mike’s own workspace is bound to create -- and nothing at all to do with the fact that it makes for a convenient excuse to see that Mike grabs his jacket on his way out.

And yeah, he’ll cop to being one damned insensitive son of a bitch -- he kind of has to; it’s rather central to his image -- but just because he takes great pains to hide his conscience that hardly means it isn’t pricked by the sudden thought of his associate having to bike home at dark passed three, so if his offer of a ride sounds less like a suggestion and more like an order, well at least the kid is smart enough to follow him without a word.

Not that the whole ride stays silent, mind. At this point, Harvey knows he'd be a fool to expect otherwise.

“Dude, should I be worried that you know where I live without needing to ask?”

“I dunno. Should I be worried that you didn’t think I’d follow up on your HR paperwork? It’s almost like you think I should trust you.”

“You mean you don’t?”

“This from the guy who thought he could drink the red line.”

There’s a pause, and Harvey disguises a glance by checking the passenger mirror. Mike’s facing out the window, giving Harvey a perfect view of his reflection. Right now his face is saying “scowl” in the way that means “I’m thinking way harder than I should reasonably have to.” Harvey chalks it up to exhaustion.

“Ok, so... you trust me not to screw you on purpose, but not to not screw you by accident?”

“At this point, I think I should reconsider trusting that you passed freshman English.”

“Dude, no fair. I’ve been up for, like--”

“Twenty minutes. Tops.”

A mostly silent sigh, so Harvey checks his mirrors again. The kid looks put out.

Well, that’s what he gets for matching wits with the master.

“God, you really are an ass.”

“Well right now I’m the ass who’s giving you a ride home. Seriously, you need to get a car.”

“But--”

“Not a suggestion.”

“Well--”

“Seriously.”

Another huff, topped by a petulant crossing of the arms. Mike really has that sullen teenager thing down pat. Too bad it doesn’t help his case for being taken as the responsible adult he was otherwise trying so very hard to be. Harvey figures he should maybe point out the inherent irony, but in the end he decides that it’s one lesson that can wait a while yet. After all, what good is having minions if you can’t also have a little bit of fun at their expense?

When he pulls up outside Mike’s apartment block the kid actually manages to sound sincere in his thank you, so maybe there’s still hope. But still--

“And do us both a favor, huh? Don’t buy it off some guy’s lawn. Save us both the embarrassment.”

Mike actually rolls his eyes -- another mark against him. _Forget_ hoping he didn’t play poker; maybe Harvey should start thinking about teaching him how.

“As if,” Mike mutters when he opens the door, but then he’s turning back around. “That’s what Craig’s List is for.”

And then he slams the door.

Harvey actually laughs aloud as he pulls away, and the good mood follows him the whole way home.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time it’s a Thursday night, not quite three weeks later. One of his oldest clients (both uses of the term) has a granddaughter that’s supposed to be getting married in two months time, only her fiancé’s family is Old World money (also both uses of the term) and it’s been hell trying to work with their solicitors to iron out the pre-nup. Between the time difference (New York to London), the monetary difference (Dollars to Pounds _and_ Euros, because of course they couldn’t pick just one), the discrepancies in each country’s legalese (US, UK, and Swiss, just to make things interesting) and Harvey is almost at the point of praying that the two lovebirds would just _elope_ already, contractual obligations be damned, and so spare them all the headache. 

So one could really say that punting the seventh revision over to Mike had been equal parts self-preservation and desperation, but the kid has a thoughtless eye for detail that Harvey could really start to envy, and there was an off chance that his still-lingering sense of innocence could prove to be exactly what they needed to find a workable approach. So really one could _also_ say that bringing Mike on board this late in the game was more like stepping up a pinch hitter to knock one out of the park than, say, handing the ball off to the relief pitcher and praying he doesn’t walk in the winning run.

And since the gamble actually paid off, Harvey figures he’s free to use whatever analogy he pleases.

He’d given Mike the file on a Tuesday. On Wednesday he’d caught him at his desk, well passed quitting time, with Swiss, British, and American law texts all dog-eared and split up with scrap-paper bookmarks. Harvey’d warned him not to work too late (they had an early court date the next morning) and left it at that. So of course the next morning, while they were waiting on an unusually tardy judge, he’d caught the kid leafing through a German/English dictionary and making notes in a little pocket notebook (because apparently he’d _memorized_ all the words he needed to look up and figured bored-in-court was as good a time as any -- and yeah, that’s one bit of envy that Harvey has no trouble admitting to, at least in the privacy of his own mind).

On Thursday, in the elevator (Harvey was on his way to a lunch meeting, Mike was on his way to meet the client for Jessica’s next _pro-bono_ ), he was treated to a lovely rant on how life would be so much easier if all the world’s lawyers just stuck to Latin “like God intended.” Harvey had very solicitously suggested Mike switch to decaff for the day before making what he hoped was a dignified exit. (And if, before that, he’d shrugged and offered “ _cursus curiae est lex curiae_ ,” well his own memory isn’t too shabby, either.)

(Not so his Latin though, apparently, unless Mike really _did_ insinuate something about his mother and a pair of leather sandals. He didn’t ask though; he has his pride.)

Then Friday Mike nearly gave him a _heart attack_ , because apparently cramming Latin and German at the same time on what was looking like very little sleep (and really, he was pretty sure he’d said “draft a pre-nup,” not “pass the foreign service exam,” so why the hell the kid was so involved in the linguistic aspect of it and not in, say, the personal one, was more than a little odd; after all, wasn’t Mike supposed to be a people person?) was the perfect recipe to start _speaking in tongues_. They’d been in his office plotting strategy for the _pro-bono_ case (a nasty divorce on top of an ongoing custody battle), and even if by then Harvey had gotten used to Mike’s growing repertoire of unusual Latin insults (because of course the lack of profanity in his translation dictionary wouldn’t stop the kid from getting his point across, _ad nauseum_ ) well there was no way in hell he was prepared for him to--

You know? Harvey still isn’t sure just what the hell it was, even after Mike explained it. One minute the kid's carrying on about the opposition (something about dead-beat dads and -- Harvey thinks -- a leper’s foreskin) and the next, he's apparently cluing into what exactly the Swiss contingent is looking for in the pre-nup. And it isn’t the abrupt change in topic that throws him -- Mike’s decidedly nonlinear approach to conversation is hardly new -- but rather it's the way he just suddenly shifts from Latin insults to German recitations with _nary a breath between them_ \-- and then looks straight at Harvey like that's his cue, like he hasn't even realized he's been playing leapfrog with foreign languages or that his boss isn't actually trilingual.

Harvey had tried to interrupt (who wouldn’t?) but in the moment the kid had been too far gone into his own head-space to notice -- right up until he’s wincing and grabbing at his temples while simultaneously deciding that plain old English has some decent curses, too (possibly; technically _fuck_ is derived from the German). And if that isn’t bizarre enough to warrant a touch of concern, well there's still the haphazard way the kid crumpled down onto his office couch with a teeth-gritting groan, but before Harvey could do more than think beyond the sudden spike of panic that his associate was busily _stroking out_ in the middle of his office, Mike suddenly found English again, and with it an explanation that made enough sense at the time for Harvey to figure the kid wasn’t in dire need of an ambulance.

Not that he could repeat it now, though (and not that he has to; the pre-nup’s been signed and so the point is moot); but in his defense, he was a little distracted at the time. And though Mike might have tried to work in an apology or six somewhere along the line (for taking so long to have an epiphany, maybe?) Harvey had waved it off and waved him out with orders just to get it done. And if he'd also made a mental note to have Donna look into whether or not Mike's had any sort of medical coverage since he left college? Well it's entirely on the owner to make sure the puppy gets to the vet at the recommended intervals. That's just part of the deal.

(And -- three years, two months, seventeen days. That’s how long it’d been since the last time Harvey felt the need to reach for the Woodford Reserve hiding in the back of his filing cabinet. He’s never held with the (rather outdated, if you ask him) norm that the elite are allowed a drink or two during office hours, but that doesn’t mean he won’t admit to a few provisos to the rule, hence the Woodford and its accompanying pair of antique highball glasses. And he isn’t going to say it was his associate’s fault (he owns the bourbon, he owns the glasses, and by God will own every last reason he has for indulging in them or else he will never be indulging again) but the two fingers’ worth that splashed into his glass definitely had Mike’s name all over them.)

But Friday he’d sent Mike off with orders to fix whatever needed fixing, and come Monday morning there was a completed pre-nup on his desk and an associate who’d looked like he was one fist-bump away from celebrating like he’d just won every last sporting championship known to man -- and single-handedly, at that -- practically dancing in his office. Which was why he'd _withheld_ said fist-bump, of course. And banished his associate on the admonishment that you don't win the game by spiking the ball before you reach the end zone. And while it wouldn't be fair or even accurate to say his associate left with his tail between his legs, that's still the image that struck Harvey as Mike slunk black out the door, because the shine had definitely been scuffed from the kid's enthusiasm.

Still, embedded in the mockery had been a rather important lesson, and if Mike only heard the one and not the other then he had considerably bigger problems than a bruised ego -- and ergo, so did Harvey -- but only time will tell.

But by Monday afternoon the pre-nup was on a plane over the Atlantic and Thursday morning it was on another plane coming back (and Harvey's pretty sure this is why God gave us fax machines and email, but apparently the Europeans feel free to disagree) with the pretentious wig-wearing _solicitor_ equivalent of a little gold star and that means they’d done it. Wonder of wonders, they’d actually managed to draft a contract that all parties can consent to, and even if Harvey isn’t above taking the credit for this monumental achievement (with the firm, with the client, with just about anyone who doesn’t run away fast enough before the gloating starts) that doesn’t mean he isn’t willing to say -- and with a perfectly straight face -- that “this is Mike Ross, my associate. He’s what got us passed the language barrier.”

Too bad Mike, in a tell that's perhaps a bit more revealing that he'd intended, hasn't quite been able to keep the pleasantly startled grin off his face in the wake of that. Harvey makes note of it, as he does every other little incongruity in his associate, and then mostly succeeds in keeping the client's attention as far away from the kid as possible. It sends a particular message when the hired shark can't keep itself from smiling, and like everything else in a lawyer's toolkit that can be hazardous if left in untrained hands -- which means that Harvey is _also_ making note of yet another lesson he's going to have to teach the kid, somehow. At this rate he'll have to get Donna to start penciling them in.

But then the day winds down into the final crossing of i's and dotting of t's, and Mike is still all thoughtless smiles and awkward, offhand references to game-winning touchdowns and flawless PATs because he's convinced he's earned the right to gloat but is still justifiably wary of getting shot down again. Harvey cuts him no quarter on that, because once again the Mike Ross Show is much too fun to interrupt, until the very last moment as they're descending in the elevator because -- did it slip his mind to let the kid in on the _real_ reason he was told to show up today in his best suit?

As far as clever segues go, it's not exactly his best, but then again its hardly his worst, either. The important thing is that it sets him up to deliver a bullet-point guide to perk timetm, which aside from being Harvey's disclosed reason for turning corporate in the first place, is also his _non_ -disclosed reason for not giving in and fist-bumping the kid out of his misery. Often it's the simple joys that truly make life worth living.

And besides, why settle for a fist-bump from the boss when you can be treated to dinner and drinks on the client’s dime?

One quick ultimatum later (" _you're allowed to have a good time; you're_ not _allowed to look like an idiot while doing so. Remember, you're a reflection of me"_ ) and Harvey is bundling his starstruck associate into the back of the town car. He gives Ray the actual physical address of where they’re headed so he can plug it into the GPS and then spends the rest of the trip alternating between actively ignoring Mike’s increasingly inane chatter and actually answering his questions in the hopes that it will shut him up.

Which of course it doesn't. Seriously, Mike babbles like it's an Olympic event and he fully expects to be judged on form, technique, and artistry. Top of Harvey's list is figuring out which strains of nerves cause verbal diarrhea and which produce the frowning, constipated silence that appear to be the kid's default settings at times like--

Well. At times, _period_. And pattern recognition might be Mike's God-gifted forte but the Harvard J.D. proves that Harvey has earned his own share. He'll figure it out eventually. Until then though he's going to be stuck scowling like a Russian judge in the back of chauffeured town cars, which is really just another shot of motivation.

But all in all the evening goes fairly well. They wind up at that new upscale sushi place Harvey hasn’t found the time to try yet, and apparently having their best paying customers announce their youngest granddaughter’s engagement means the whole entourage is entitled to the very best tea and a round of “this isn’t imported so we have to smuggle it out of Japan in our suitcases” sake. Their actual client abstains, but his business partner doesn’t and by the third glass he’s absolutely convinced that Harvey is the perfect match for his own precious little twice-divorced snowflake, and Mike -- who really does seem to be genuinely oblivious to the fact that the client’s son has been looking for an in to his pants all night -- finds this to be the most hilarious thing ever, which Harvey just _knows_ is going to come around and bite him on the ass at some point, courtesy of Mike’s eidetic memory.

By the time they’re rolling out the _shibugaki_ and fried ice cream Harvey finds himself sorely tempted to violate every last “no fraternization” clause ever written and stake a public claim on Mike, just to escape the partner’s attempts to sell off his own daughter like a cash cow and on the outside, rescue Mike from what looks to be the sleaziest pick up he’s ever had the displeasure of witnessing. Seriously. It’s long since left _uncomfortable_ in the dust and is quickly shading into “I bet the feds would have a field day with your hard drive” territory, and no way is Mike _that_ oblivious so Harvey is left to conclude that actually his associate is possessed of a lot more poise than he's ever been credited.

But in the end there are hugs and handshakes (and did he really just see his client’s sleazeball son grab his associate’s ass? _Note to self: make sure Mike knows that “your obligation to the client does not exceed your obligation to the firm and its good name” covers more than just the baser illegalities_ ) and he’s pouring a still-with-it-but-definitely-tipsy Mike back into the town car for his chauffeured ride home.

Not that Mike knows he’s going home, of course, but that’s because Mike falls asleep not ten seconds after they pull out into traffic, and while he might not be exactly drunk he certainly wouldn’t pass a sobriety test so regardless he's not going back to the office -- and thence to the stupid bike Harvey's been after him to upgrade in favor of something with an internal combustion engine -- no matter his preference. Not that he's even aware enough to (mistakenly) believe he has a say in the matter, anyway.

Harvey, unfortunately, is stone cold sober by this point (he’d held off after the initial toast; he has a rule about not drinking with bigger sharks than his own self) so he doesn’t have even so much as a mild buzz to ease him through the nighttime road construction traffic nightmare he’d forgotten about until it was too late to matter for their route. He asks his driver to flick on the A/C and the classical jazz station because he really would like to unwind, thank you very much, and preferably before the burgeoning headache behind his eyes sets down deeper roots. So the air slowly cools, and the jazz slowly soothes, and Harvey tips his head back against the seat back and tries to blank his mind.

Every so often he hears Mike shuffling in his sleep (town cars are not nearly as comfortable as one might think, Harvey knows firsthand, and especially not for sleeping) and that’s easy enough to ignore, but what should have been a fifteen minute ride winds up lasting over forty, and somewhere near the half hour mark Harvey feels a subtle warmth, near but not quite touching his thigh. It’s intrusive enough that he cracks an eyelid, and then he isn’t surprised to see that said warmth is really Mike. Somehow he’s managed to curl himself down into a ball on the seat, feet pressed between the front seat and the door and head so close to Harvey’s leg that his hair is just slightly brushing against Harvey’s pants. His tie is still attached, just loose, and Harvey frowns because that’s a good way to either choke yourself or tear the silk. That and the kid’s jacket is all bunched up around the shoulders, making him look even thinner than he really is, and a bit like the suit is actively trying to swallow him whole.

In the privacy of the darkened town car, Harvey allows himself the ghost of a smile, even as he feels something _twist_ , deep in his chest, as his thoughts run their natural course, because it’s already after midnight on a school night and Harvey is _tired_ , and sober, and seriously considering talking to his friends in the US attorney’s office about the son of his client -- and then there’s Mike Ross, quite possibly the most brilliant fuck up Harvey has ever met (and Harvey has met many; “fuck up” is such a broad term), most definitely the biggest threat to his career, looking way too fucking innocent for the guy who admitted to half a dozen felonies inside the first ten minutes of their acquaintance. And he knows it’s wrong (so, _so_ wrong -- and dangerous, besides) to look down at the human embodiment of the inevitable end of everything he’s worked so long and hard to build and see nothing but a (pathetically adorable) kid who looks for all the world like he dropped in his socks after an exhausting day of playing dress up in daddy’s closet.

That’s the thought that sets him to reaching down to and shaking Mike awake right then and there, even though they're still several miles out.

Or, well, he had _intended_ to shake him -- not hard, but still enough to get the point across -- but then Mike snaps instantly awake the moment Harvey touches him. Snaps awake and _freezes_ , somehow staying statue-still except for the tiny muscle quivers that Harvey would have missed entirely if he couldn’t feel them with his own hand.

“Mike?” he asks, so studiously casual, even as his fingers curve reflexively around one bony shoulder. Just where the reflex came from, he doesn’t bother to examine.

“Harvey?” Barely a whisper, sleepy and befuddled. The kid still doesn’t move; just blinks owlishly in the dim lighting. “Where are we?”

“The town car.”

“Oh.” And just like that, all the latent tension drains from Mike’s frame with a mostly silent sigh. Then he’s shoving himself back up to sitting and Harvey pulls his hand back with such careful nonchalance that, hopefully, the prolonged contact never fully registers in his associate’s sleep-fogged brain.

Even still, it’s surprisingly difficult to not flex his fingers afterwards. No one should ever feel that fragile beneath a power suit and Harvey has spent too long at his exclusive health club to not know what strength lies in his own two hands. But of course, Mike is completely oblivious to his private dilemma of how to work _the firm’s resident lifestyle coach would be happy to refer you to a decent nutritionist_ into casual conversation.

He scrubs a hand across his face and asks, “how long have I been out?”

“Since you sat down.”

“Really?”

“Pretty much. My back was starting to hurt just looking at you.”

“Sorry,” Mike says, and he might be blushing except Harvey can’t exactly tell when his face is still flushed with sleep and there are lines from the leather seat ironed into one side of it. “And, uh, thanks.”

Harvey just shrugs.

Their ride continues, and surprisingly Mike doesn’t try to sleep again, just stares listlessly out his window. Harvey, for his part, keeps his gaze firmly fixed at front and center, and is shamelessly grateful for the silence.  



	3. Chapter 3

The third time it’s a Saturday afternoon, roughly two weeks after that. Things have actually been running smoothly for once -- no major crises and now they're three for three on the _pro-bono_ front -- and as such Harvey has been cruising through just about as good a mood as he ever really gets, sans a post-win high. Which is a good thing, because life around the office has been a lot less tense, even if Mike did start shooting him little funny looks round about lunchtime on day four, because apparently he has no idea how to relate to his asshole of a boss when he doesn’t feel like he’s just one mistake away from getting fired.

Or, well, one mistake away from whatever horrible alternative he’s got fixed in his mind as likely punishment, since he knows full well and good that Harvey can’t risk firing him with their mutual blackmail pact still hanging over their heads. And come to think of it, Harvey really should try to figure out just what the kid’s afraid he’ll do -- dock his pay, maybe? -- because if nothing else, Mike’s imagination in that arena is probably a lot more creative than his own. Probably because, so far, he hasn’t really seen the need to let Mike suffer anything stronger than the lash of his own conscience, or the weight of his seemingly constant fear of somehow letting Harvey down.

So he’s a manipulative bastard. So sue him -- and let’s just see how far you get with that.

Louis might not be his favorite person in the world (actually, there may be very few people he dislikes more, save the worst of the shitbags he's prosecuted and the fair few individuals he hasn’t actually met in person and so therefore must loathe only in abstract) but that doesn’t preclude him from being right, usually at the most inconvenient times, and damned if he didn’t hit it on the head with how Mike Ross is absolutely starving for a mentor. Of course, the one thing Louis can’t see -- because he wasn’t in that interview suite and so didn’t hear the absolute soul-scraping _honesty_ in Mike’s regret for how his life turned out; or maybe because he really is just that blind -- is that Mike Ross has _integrity_ , and not the kind that can be bought and sold and traded for a higher billable. Louis, if he could see it, would find the concept absolutely foreign.

Harvey, on the other hand, finds it positively _refreshing_. All bright and shiny new and (whisper it quietly) more in need of protection than exploitation.

If the Devil’s best trick was convincing the world He didn’t exist, well then his worst was forgetting to patent the idea, because in the world of corporate law perceptions are the coin of the realm and people like Louis are not going to stop trying to take advantage of Mike until he stops giving them reason to think he’ll be an easy mark. That more than anything else is the one trick the kid absolutely must learn if he wants to survive the business, let alone get ahead in it, and thankfully it’s something that Harvey can actually teach him.

Hell, it's something Harvey actually _wants_ to teach him, and the sooner the better, besides.

If nothing else, it’ll finally mean that he’ll stop having to rescue the kid from another one of Louis’ schemes every other time he turns around.

And yeah, granted, Mike desperately wants to be able to put his faith in someone solid, but on the flip side it’s starting to look more and more like Louis is just as desperate for someone to look to _him_ for such a role -- which, on balance, is really rather sad, considering. Perception again, and Louis’ reputation precedes him, but who knows? Maybe he’d have better luck if he would shift his focus onto someone who _isn’t_ Harvey’s own hand-picked associate. Especially since Mike is really more of a rescue project and not just the pick of the litter from their exclusive Cambridge breeder. Straight off the cuff the kid’s already got way more life experience than any of the Harvard douche-bots populating the cube farm alongside him, and that alone should render him immune to (most of) Louis’ tricks, if only he would start acting more like he actually deserves to be here and less like he’s some half-starved mutt that followed Harvey home.

And just _never mind_ what the implications say about Harvey himself. He’d wanted a subordinate, a _mini-me_ , a trained monkey who could actually follow along without prompting to help ease some of the burden of his own workload. What he got was -- well. What he got was _Mike_ , and for better or worse (for lots and lots of better and the unholy threat of so much worse) they have to find a way to make it work.

Which is why he’s heading back to work on a Saturday afternoon -- more importantly, on one of his very rare pre-planned _days off_ \-- because sadly, for all his book smarts, his associate still hasn’t learned the difference between the urgent and the essential and the only merely important. Or at least that’s what Harvey figures the issue is, because otherwise he’s got nothing.

It had started innocently enough. For all Harvey’s stated good mood riding out the week, Mike had spent the whole time waiting for the other shoe to drop -- which, granted, is a worry not without precedent -- but for the life of him Harvey could not figure out why a guy who always seems to have more than enough trouble on his plate at any given time would be so eager to go out and borrow more. The whole thing was more than a little exasperating, to be honest, but still Harvey had tried, in his own way, to encourage the kid to enjoy the calm while it lasted, because experience has already proven that they still caught more than their fair share of storms.

And when _that_ avenue proved ultimately fruitless he’d tried instead to drown Mike in non-essential busywork. A decision that has clearly come back to haunt him, if the panicked voicemail he received on Friday night is any indication.

 _Late_ Friday night. Two-minutes-to-midnight late, and if Harvey didn’t bother to check his messages until almost lunchtime the next day? Well it was _day off_ , Goddamnit! Usually if whatever fire broke out in his absence was deadly enough to light up the chain of command Jessica would just call him at home, so he felt reasonably confident in leaving his cell on silent and only checking occasionally for missed calls. That’s what he usually did when he took a day off to bask in the warm honeyed glow of nothing pressing at the office, and since none of the files he’d left Mike with could be even remotely tagged as _pressing_ in any sense of the word...

Well, that’s his associate for you. Living proof that it’s actually very possible to be positively brilliant at the subject of law and an absolute _moron_ at the practice of it. And even though Harvey actually did know this going in, sometimes the realities of working with an idiot savant are enough to make him wish Jessica never offered him a promotion in the first place. He was destined to make senior partner anyway; no real reason he had to get there at the exact right time to add _aiding and abetting_ to his cache of homemade skeletons.

Unless of course there really is a higher power, in which case Harvey is seriously starting to wonder what he did to piss It off; and further, how he can go about mitigating the issue before his life can get more complicated.

Because here he is, back at the office on what should have been _his_ Saturday, wondering what the hell is wrong with his associate because first, that panicked voicemail had been long on doom and short on actual information, but more importantly because he’s called back three times already and the idiot _isn’t answering his Goddamn phone_! Not cell, not desk, not home. And Harvey doesn’t need this. He really, really doesn’t. Not on his day off. Not _ever_.

Harvey is the senior partner, Mike is the associate. He shouldn’t have to come running when Mike calls -- it’s offensive, it’s _backwards_ , it had better mean that Mike is in the middle of a goddamn _hostage situation_ because nothing less will save him.

But of course, the place is quiet. Lobby deserted except the weekend security guy, Pearson-Hardman deserted except for a handful of associates, the dimmer ones who nod at him and the more astute who must take a good look at his face because then they're turning right back around and getting the hell out of his way. And Mike’s cube shows signs of life -- jacket over the back of the chair, uncapped pens and highlighters scattered about, sticky notes all over the edge of the monitor -- but no associate in sight. But his bike is still locked up outside, so he can’t have gotten far.

He checks the men’s room first, because it's the most obvious, and when that doesn’t work he tries the break room, the communal law library, records, and the various conference rooms the associates are known to commandeer when they need a bigger work space than their pathetic cube desks -- all nothing. He calls each of Mike’s numbers again, and when he gets nothing but voicemail on all three he starts to seriously consider just turning around and going home and dealing with Mike on Monday. Thirty six hours should prove sufficiently long enough to calm him down to the point where he can think up an appropriate punishment for this wild _idiot_ chase. Really. He’s almost looking forward to it.

 _Almost_ , and the one thing that’s stopping him is the fact of Mike’s proven eye for detail, because it means there’s a slight chance that he caught on to something urgent in the non-essential busywork after all, and that’s enough for Harvey to start considering which poor unsuspecting drone he should corner and interrogate first.

But then, there’s still one last place Harvey hasn’t looked yet, and he wants to kick himself when he realizes it. So he really is not surprised when at last he finds Mike holed up in his own office.

Or, well, maybe he is, just a little, because he _knows_ he locked the door on his way out and didn’t Mike say he’d already figured _breaking and entering_ to be a terminal offense? So apparently Mike thinks he can take liberties with Harvey that he wouldn’t with the rest of the firm, but that--

Well, no. Harvey really _can’t_ argue with that one. Just because Mike might have been sincere when he said it was his dream to be a lawyer, or that he would repay Harvey’s grace in the matter by going above and beyond to become God’s gift to law itself, that still doesn’t change the fact that he’s still, essentially, Harvey’s _blackmailer_ in all this mess. And Harvey really, _really_ needs to stop losing sight of that.

Which would probably be hell of a lot easier if the kid isn’t so damned good at looking the part. Like now for instance, when he's sat on the floor of Harvey's office, back propped up against the side of his desk, color-coded file-folders strewn all about like an Escher’s game of Twister -- and head tipped back and snoring softly. Harvey blinks, and blinks again, but the image doesn’t do him the courtesy of changing into something else, so it seems his associate really _has_ fallen asleep, highlighter in one hand and pen in the other, and some dense-font document half fallen off his lap.

Well, one mystery solved.

For the next, Harvey grabs his phone, and ~~fights off the urge to snap off a few quick pictures~~ dials Mike’s cell. He hears it ring somewhere near Mike’s person, so there goes the second mystery, but the answer itself is still rather worrisome because the kid doesn’t even twitch.

Harvey grabs his door, and the whole frame rattles hard before he realizes his associate must have locked the door behind him -- and yes, thank you, that’s just what his day needed. He keys the lock and spares a moment to be grateful that whatever crude office implements Mike appropriated to the task didn’t break the damn thing (and _note to self: offering attorney/client privilege should get Mike to confess to any other hidden illegal talents_ ) before figuring on the best way to wake the kid. He doesn’t want to disturb Mike’s sorting system -- if it even exists -- in case it really is important, so whatever he does, he’ll have to do it pretty much from where he stands.

Too bad he can’t slam his door. He’s already made that mistake once, and found the glass to be just as unforgiving as Jessica had been. So he’ll have to think of something else.

Fortunately, it’s not all that hard.

“ _You’re fired_!”

Mike startles awake, zero to sixty before Harvey can blink, and the pen, highlighter, and lapfull of papers go flying. Harvey takes a rather vindictive degree of satisfaction at the sight.

“Harvey!” Mike shifts in his seat as he tries to collect both himself and his papers. Or at least that’s what Harvey presumes he’s doing. From where he stands it looks like Mike is only making a bigger mess. “You’re, uh, you’re here. Um, hold on a sec...” And the gathering continues.

“Of course I’m here,” Harvey snarks, as cover, because _no way_ did his associate just put him on hold after having been caught sleeping on the job in the federal disaster area that is now Harvey’s own office -- except no, that’s _exactly_ what Mike did, exactly what Mike is doing _right now_ as he shuffles and mumbles and quotes to himself from God knows what, and the cover is absolutely necessary because so help him Harvey Specter will _not_ be struck dumb by his skinny-tied lapsed-pothead associate _not_ -lawyer. “This is my office. And I’ll give you _five_ seconds to tell me what the hell you think you’re doing in it before I call security.”

Mike stills long enough to stop and stare at him, and there’s a brief, uncomfortable pause where Harvey could swear the kid is sizing him up before Mike decides to call his bluff. Not that Harvey expected anything less, of course, but still he’s gratified that Mike had to at least take a few moments to think about it first.

“I needed the Colman file,” Mike says, and Harvey blinks because he honestly can’t see how Colman connects to any of the work his associate was supposed to be doing. And now that it’s out there, Harvey can see that it’s definitely the source of the paper avalanche around Mike’s knees. “It was in your office, and if you don’t want people breaking in then you should tell Donna to lock her desk. Your spares were in her second drawer.”

That throws him, because usually Donna _does_ lock her desk (he knows this because he’s needed access to those self same spares and so found himself decidedly out of luck) and it must be down to random chance that the one time Mike needed access neatly coincided with the first time she forgot, but before he can do more than make a mental note of the irony Mike is speaking again, and the words are definitely enough to capture all of his attention.

“And if you fire me I won’t have to tell you how I just saved your ass.”

“You’re not fired,” Harvey says, dismissive, like he never meant the words at all (because he hadn’t, obviously). “I just needed to wake you, and apparently your phone makes a crappy alarm clock.”

Mike frowns and grabs his phone from under Harvey’s desk (how it got there, he has no idea; same with how Mike didn’t even have to think about where to look for it), and his eyes sort of bug a little when he sees the missed call log.

“Yeah.”

Mike blushes a bit. It must be that fair complexion. “Sorry,” he says, and winces when he tries for eye contact.

Harvey waves it off. If the kid really is serious about this then he can forgive the interrupted weekend. “So. You’ve got my attention. Tell me how my ass was saved with nothing but the Colman file and Donna’s spare keys.”

Mike grins, sharp and smug and full of shark, but then he gestures to the couch. Harvey arches an inquiring eyebrow, but Mike just gestures again -- with a highlighter this time -- and Harvey concludes that its either because the kid thinks this is going to take a while, or because he would really rather not speak his peace with his boss looming over him. Whatever. Harvey acquiesces because if (God forbid) he really did overlook something that very nearly led to disaster -- and if his associate not only caught the oversight on his own but also found a way to mitigate the damage -- and is now gearing up to gloat about it in what is sure to be glorious (and gloriously tasteless) detail -- then yeah, maybe he should take it sitting down.

So he sits, and gestures again, and this time Mike grabs the files, shimmies close enough for Harvey to follow along -- and starts with a non-sequitur.

“I don’t suppose you watched the news last night?”

And no, Harvey didn’t, because last night he’d been too busy entertaining the phenomenally hot Belgian stewardess with whom he shares an understood hookup every time she flies into town. Not that it matters though because the question is rhetorical, like Mike’s already decided that if Harvey actually _had_ caught the news then he wouldn’t have needed his associate to bail him out on his day off. Harvey appreciates the both the sentiment and the subsequent reassurance that whatever happened, it wasn’t because of his own mistake.

“No, I don’t suppose I did,” he says. “Enlighten me.”

Mike grins again -- softer this time, and warmer too despite the smug -- and proceeds to do just that.


	4. Chapter 4

  
The fourth time it’s a Friday night -- well, make that Saturday morning -- not quite one week later. It’s the night of the annual William F. Lowell memorial all-stakes charity poker tourney, and inviting Mike along had been very much a last minute idea. Last minute as in Friday afternoon as they were leaving court after a decisive victory (hostile takeovers can be a thing of beauty when they’re done legally, but when some asshole CEO decides that New York state law does not apply to his company -- or better, that he can either bribe or blackmail his way around said law -- then, well, they’re _still_ a thing of beauty, just for the other team) and since it isn’t often that he gets the chance to so thoroughly school an opponent he might have once classed as an equal, and since in all fairness at least partial credit for the win is owed to the fact that Mike Ross is his very own law library on legs, he’d gone ahead and issued the invite in a fit of uncharacteristic _bonhomie_. 

If pressed, he could always say that Mike had earned it. And it wouldn’t even be too far wrong.

Because it had been _Mike_ who’d caught onto how Colman Publishing was about to get steam-rolled, and then it had been _Mike_ who’d gone and done 85% of the leg work so that by the time Harvey was even made aware of the issue they were already well passed the “oh shit” stage and into counter-strategizing. And even if the kid doesn’t exactly have the right mindset for playing dirty politics (that aren’t also eminently self-serving, because -- well, _obviously_ ) he’s practically hardwired for bookwork, which left Harvey free to both sort out the soft targets and ignore his external conscience for the better part of a week with relatively little fear of something getting overlooked back at the office.

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, and that’s what Mike is good for. Other times though you have to go after the fire _starters_ , and for that Harvey had very much preferred leaving the kid sequestered in the law library until their court date. And no, that decision had absolutely nothing to do with how much the kid stands to lose if their fraud is outed by an outside source, because for Harvey Specter self-preservation is as natural as breathing and if the wolves catch scent of Mike’s dirty secret then they’re only one very small intellectual leap away from Harvey’s own. He has enough blackmailers in his life right now, thank you very much. Even the distant threat of picking up another is enough to make his shoulders itch.

So Mike had handled the law and Harvey had handled the opposition and by the time they stood before the judge it was all pretty much a formality. A _fun_ formality. A _gratifying_ formality. A _this one definitely calls for a little celebration_ formality -- except Harvey already had plans. He’d briefly entertained the thought of dragging the kid to dinner before the buy-in, but they’d already done the post-court “I’m hungry -- you coming or what?” dance before and often enough that Mike could be forgiven for confusing his intended reward for business as usual, and that wouldn’t do. For his efforts above and beyond on this case, Harvey could genuinely admit that Mike really had earned some form of special compensation, but then the gesture would be entirely wasted if the kid is too oblivious to recognize the gift horse for what it really is.

After all, the last time he’d tried this he’d disguised the invitation as an order and Mike had been a no-show. The meeting with McKirnan motors was strictly business, but the pre-game invite to the car club had been Harvey’s way of saying thank you for the gift of Tom Keller’s retainer on a silver platter, not to mention the added bonus of how he’d been snatched right out of Louis’ oily hands. So instead of finding out firsthand what Mike’s eye for detail would have done in the presence of so much perfection on wheels he’d had to settle instead for graciously not making an issue out of Mike’s tardiness. A gesture in itself, really, but one Mike rather predictably mistook for an unrelated sacrifice on the altar of expedience in light of what actually transpired at the meeting in question.

It hadn’t been important, not really, so Harvey had let it slide, but that hardly meant he hadn’t been irritated at having been effectively jilted by his associate, all (mostly decent, just like Mike himself (the little shit)) excuses aside, because instead of seeing if Mike has any better appreciation for expensive cars than he does for expensive suits he’d had to amuse himself instead by farming favors with like-minded hedge fund managers.

Though in retrospect, he honestly can’t complain about the outcome.

But still, it's a sad irony that for all Mike’s rather unhealthy need for outside validation (well masked by a veneer of both earned and unearned arrogance, but then still not completely hidden despite all conscious effort), Harvey’s first gesture of -- if not real warmth than at least some noticeable thaw -- went completely overlooked, and then his second had been mistaken for something else entirely. Honestly, for someone so hypersensitive to the threat of the stick, you’d think it would follow that he’d also be much more alert to the scent of the carrot, but no. Not Mike Ross. Apparently his associate does not do ‘subtle’ well at all, which -- alright, fine; precedent established -- unfortunately leaves only the open and the grand. Good to know, but still a pain in the ass to work with.

Fortunately for both of them, Harvey is more than familiar with the sentiment.

But lesson learned, Harvey’s third stab at “I’m trying to be nice, Goddamnit; so stop ruining it!” went over beautifully, but then again there’s really no way anyone could miss someone else unexpectedly picking up their $10,000 tab. Not even Mike at his most annoyingly dense. Though -- and again, _predictably_ \-- he did translate the act into “thank you for suddenly and unexpectedly ‘getting it’ right when I needed it most,” which admittedly wasn’t too far wrong, but then there was _also_ a shade of “I’m not going to let Louis asshole you into dropping more than a month’s salary in one go because we both know you don’t have savings enough to float it yet,” but just as well that the kid didn’t pick up on it. After all, the last thing he needs is another baseless accusation of ‘caring.’ They’re bad for his image -- and worse, dangerous for his working relationships.

Rewards for good work are one thing -- tit for tat, really; cause and effect -- and not unreasonably expected, but Mike has made it his personal quest to prove that Harvey is actually _not_ the well-intentioned sociopath the world mistakes him for (or some such nonsense) and it’s seriously disconcerting, this new phenomenon of having someone bound and determined to think the best of him, but more than that it’s shading uncomfortably close to dealing in bad faith. Harvey’s sins are many, but that has never been one of them and he’s determined not to let his associate break him of one of his most deliberate habits. He’ll take Mike’s loyalty (as his due), and he’ll take Mike’s respect (his to earn, his to keep, his to lose), and he’ll take Mike’s pathological need to please him (because it gets results) but he _will not_ take Mike’s full subscription of issues as an excuse to let the kid cast him in a role he neither needs nor wants nor is even fit to play, besides, because if that isn’t the very definition of ‘bad faith’ then Harvey doesn’t know what is.

What his associate _really_ needs to get is that Harvey has his back, and that commitment is both self-preservation (stated) and contractual obligation (also stated, but he’s pretty sure Mike missed the giant clue-by-four in all that talk of reciprocal loyalty) and _nothing else_ , besides. Except, maybe -- full disclosure -- the pure green streak of possessive jealousy that sets Harvey’s teeth on edge whenever Louis starts back up again, the one that snarls how Mike is _his_ and he doesn’t have to share him if he doesn’t want to.

True, he always has taken exceptional care of that which he’s claimed -- if nothing else (if ignoring everything else) they’re a reflection back on him -- but _taking care_ is not the same as _caring_ , not the way Mike seems to think it is, because caring is by nature altruistic and _agäpé_ has never been one of Harvey’s virtues.

So he’d paid for the dinner, as “thank you” and “you’re welcome” and “because I can” and “because you _shouldn’t_ , moron,” and Mike had been appropriately appreciative, if not a little shell-shocked, because despite Harvey’s intentions all Mike seemed to hear was “I find you worthy of the investment” and once the euphoria of _not having to cover he bill_ wore off it had been painfully obvious that the kid really had no idea what to do with that kind of validation, for all he’d been so thirsting for it.

In hindsight, Harvey wonders why that had been so shocking, because Mike is nothing if not predictable when he really shouldn’t be and then surprising when Harvey’s least expecting it. And it’s exhausting sometimes, trying to keep ahead of the curve.

But yeah, the kid is worth it.

Not that he’ll ever admit it out loud.

So when Mike’s handling of the whole Colman thing not only went a long way towards preventing the hostile takeover of his client’s company -- and ergo, towards preventing both Harvey and the firm from losing said client outright -- but _also_ gave Harvey one of his most enjoyable days in court in recent (and not so recent) memory, he had felt absolutely justified in pitching the concept of Mike maybe buying into the poker tourney. After all it was for a good cause, and the kid’s mad skills definitely leant themselves towards the science of cards if not the art, so it was a pretty safe bet that even if Mike didn’t win (and Harvey seriously doubted he would; the human element would trip him every time) he would still do well enough to have a reasonably good time while losing his money to charity. And Mike, once he managed to wrap his brain around the concept, had been more than agreeable.

 _More than_ , in that shy, bashful, blushing virgin-on-the-wedding-night kind of way that all but proves Harvey is right to think that Mike doesn’t know the first thing about competitive poker. That and the kid is so starved for actual social interaction that he’s willing to go way outside his comfort zone to get it. And possibly that he’s still far too fixated on whether or not he can prove that Harvey just might give a damn.

That _someone_ gives a damn, really, and that’s another unwanted thought that Harvey does his best to stomp out of existence whenever it rears its ugly head. Usually whenever Mike forgets what exactly it means to be a lawyer.

Like right now, for instance.

Harvey would be the first to admit that the booths in the hotel bar are actually fairly comfortable, but really, discovering his associate curled up on one of the bench seats, using his own suit jacket as a blanket and _totally out cold_ is--

You know? He really isn’t all that surprised anymore. Mike has already proven that he has a knack for falling asleep anytime, anywhere like it’s as easy as flipping a Goddamn switch. And on further reflection its actually his complete and total _lack_ of surprise that shocks him. As does the odd rush of warmth that twists its way around his insides at the sight of his associate before he can finish thinking all the implications through.

See, the tournament operates on three tiers: low bid, mid bid, and high stakes. Harvey, naturally, bought into the high stakes game, which meant he’d spent the entire evening ensconced in one of the hotel’s nicer conference rooms. He’d lasted to the final three, but his opponents had spent the whole evening smoking like chimneys and the booby prize was a free meal at a restaurant that he didn’t particularly care for anyway, so when it looked liked the game could easily last another two hours at least Harvey decided it was time for his burgeoning headache to finally trump his pride. He bowed out on a win, told the dealer to divide his chips between the two remaining players (it was all the charity’s money by then anyway), and took his leave, fully expecting that his associate would have already made his own exit hours earlier. Indeed, the only reason he stopped by the bar in the first place was so he wouldn’t have to dry-swallow the Tylenol he’d picked up from the dispenser by the vending machines.

Thus finding Mike Ross passed out in a booth had been, well, surprisingly not surprising, no matter that he’d hoped for otherwise, because the last time he’d checked in with the kid it had been just after ten and the low-bid games were already over. Mike, he’d learned, hadn’t made it passed the quarterfinals (the low-bid players being numerous enough to merit structured rounds), but on the upside the understatedly attractive forensic accountant who’d bounced him out had decided that his associate was worth a second look. So there’d been a chance, a _very good chance_ , that Mike would have already disappeared for the evening on the arm of a beautiful woman. Harvey had even found himself rooting for the kid; after all, if ever there was someone who needed a good lay to loosen up his strings a little...

So yeah, a part of him had sincerely hoped that Mike would already be gone.

Of course, the larger part of him (the part that is possessed of greater survival instincts than a drunken lemming and thus makes sure he thinks with his law degree instead of his conscience, his emotions, or his dick) was still hung up on the revelation that Mike _also_ apparently has no qualms whatsoever about lying through his teeth while playing _never, never_ with bunch of FBI-issue mathletes of varying pedigree. He’d been impressed despite himself, even as he couldn’t help but think of all the horrible ways that it could end.

In due diligence he’d informed the kid that the event drew more than its fair share of feds -- only natural since it was held in honor of one of their own fallen -- but Mike had apparently decided to take that as a _challenge_ and not the friendly warning he’d meant it for.

Well, that was his associate for you. Ballsy and cunning and impulsive and yet somehow still so inherently _genuine_ , for all of that. Fucking contradiction in terms, but somehow he made it work.

Which is why he really hadn’t expected to find Mike still here, almost three hours later. After all, if he could talk Harvey into hiring him, then surely he could talk his way into a consenting woman’s bed after she’d already spent a good portion of the evening sitting on his -- lap. Yeah. But apparently not. And the fact that Mike is currently passed out in the mostly-deserted hotel bar means either that he failed to seal the deal, or worse, that he’d had the chance and didn’t take it.

Interesting.

But Harvey is in no mood for interesting. He’s tired, and headachey, and almost desperate to change out of his suit -- and in no mood to drive clear across town to drop Mike off on his way home. On the other hand though it’s not like he can just _leave_ the kid here -- it’s a public place; there’s liability if nothing else -- which means he’s either got to pour the kid into a cab or convince him to shell out for an actual room for the night. The first one, probably, because he doubts Mike would want to drop the cash for a bed he’s only going to see for a couple of hours. Even Harvey of the “it’s no crime to spend it if you’ve got it” school of thought would balk at that.

But regardless, he still has to wake the kid up first, and he’s really not looking forward to the prospect. It’s not like he hasn’t had the pleasure before -- really, finding Mike in odd places is pretty much synonymous with finding him _asleep_ in said places -- and it's not like he doesn’t already know that alcohol tends to instill in Mike a kind of sleepy lassitude, all floppy warmth and a blissfully switched-off brain, but still.

Still.

He doesn’t know how much Mike had to drink, or when he stopped, or why he’s here alone when by rights he should be off somewhere enjoying some female company, and that’s a lot of unknowns for two a.m. and a headache prodded to life by the stench of stale cigar smoke emanating from his own suit. And hair. And probably even his skin.

(Goddamn human smokestacks. Next time he won’t look the other way when they bribe the hotel manager into looking the other way in regards to the statewide smoking restrictions. They’d probably lose faster for the irritability anyway.)

But the point is he doesn’t know what to expect when he wakes Mike up this time, though it's even odds that he’ll either startle right up off the bench -- and subsequently hit his head on the underside of the table -- or he’ll freeze solid and play possum until he determines whether or not it's safe to admit he’s really awake. There’s only one way to find out though, so he drops a hand on Mike’s shin and squeezes, just a little, because precedent says that touch merits stillness and Harvey is not actually enough of an asshole to want to induce a minor head injury in his associate just for spite.

And maybe, _probably_ , because he actually took a moment to think about it before hand, this time Mike’s punchy reflexes give him something in between. Yes he startles, but he doesn’t spasm or jackknife off the bench. Rather he tenses up around an inarticulate, startled _hum_ , and twists around until he’s got a good view of who or what had woken him.

“Harvey,” he says, a statement of fact scraped over a throat dried out by alcohol and mouth-breathing in his sleep. Then he sits up, slithers out from under his suit jacket, scrubs a hand across his face, and blinks in quick succession until either his eyes adjust to the moody lighting or the sleep-grit gets carried out by tears. Probably the latter, given how bright his eyes shine in the half second before he’s scrubbing at his face again. “Ugh. You smell like my grandpa.”

Harvey arches a calculating eyebrow. “Your grandfather smokes illegally imported Cuban cigars?”

“Smoked. Past tense,” Mike clarifies, and there’s an odd quality to his voice besides the dehydrated rasp. Half wistful, half pointed. “Told us he’d give up his legal, _Dominican_ cigars when we pried them from his cold, _dead_ fingers. Didn’t have to, though. It was actually still in his mouth when he went.” And ok, Harvey gets it, and he wants to laugh because the wistful comes from old memories polished up with alcohol and the pointed is, he thinks, Mike’s attempt at an object lesson.

“Lung cancer?” he asks, because the words are sobering in and of themselves and laughing at the only-reformed-by-circumstance pothead’s oblique attempt to lecture him on unhealthy habits would likely go over as laughing at the grandfather’s demise, and -- no. Just no. Not even if it was _Louis_ ’ grandfather. His lines might not mesh up with other people’s but he does have them, and they do not discriminate.

“Heart attack. While he was in the hospital recovering from a stroke.”

“He lit up inside a hospital? Seriously?”

“It was the eighties,” Mike says, like it’s supposed to explain everything. And if it was anyone else Harvey would question whether or not they even _remember_ the eighties, at least with any real clarity, but then this is _Mike_ so he dismisses the thought as irrelevant. “So you’re here,” Mike adds before Harvey can switch his mental gears and take the wheel in this odd conversation. “Does this mean it’s over? How’d you do?”

“I decided fake money wasn’t worth the second-hand smoke.” And it's the honest truth. Though if Mike decides to take it for reassurance that his boss has one less vice for him to worry about, that's his prerogative.

“I thought the prize was a dinner voucher.”

Harvey shrugs. It’s all the same to him.

“Huh. I guess that means you didn’t win.”

“Still got farther than you.” The banter is familiar, and any other night it might even be fun, but Harvey has a headache and a shameful dry cleaning bill to look forward to and he’s _not in the mood_. “And _speaking_ of not going places, what are you still doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” Mike says, like the answer is obvious because the question was doubly stupid.

And Harvey sighs, because: “of course you are.” He wants to ask if Mike seriously gave up on his booty call because it’s only polite to leave with the same person you came in with, but there’s no real way he can frame the question without sounding like he’s way more interested in his associate’s sex life than is healthy, or appropriate, or even true.

And worse, the fact that it must look to Mike like he’d shown up at the bar to collect him can only validate the kid’s belief that it would have been impolite to leave ahead of his ride. Because it’s not like he can just pack the kid off in a cab. Not now.

“Alright, sleeping beauty. Time to go.”

“Yeah...” Mike takes a second to think about it, but then he gathers his jacket and starts a systematic check of all his pockets. He locates his tie (right outer jacket), his phone (left inner jacket), his wallet (back left pants), and his keys (right pants -- and Harvey winces because Mike must have slept on them) before deciding he still has everything he came with.

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

Harvey leads them down to the lobby, around to the other set of elevators, and then down again to the parking garage, and surprisingly enough Mike follows silently along. It’s a heavy silence though, bogged down by furtive glances and the full weight of one white elephant.

He knows he should have expected this. Sleep and alcohol have dulled Mike’s mind enough to leave him even _less_ subtle than his usual unsubtle self, and before that he’d likely spent the entire evening overhearing snatches of the same old gossip and, possibly, maybe even parts of the full story. It’s only natural that he’s curious.

Too bad for him, then, that Harvey has no intentions of indulging that curiosity. Of all the reasons he invited Mike along tonight, the itch to talk about -- _stuff_ \-- is so far from being one of them that they don’t even share a zip code. Or a hemisphere. And Mike can sit and fidget and shoot underhanded little looks in his direction all he likes because they will not change a thing.

“Um, I left my bag back at the office,” Mike says, finally, when it dawns on him that they’re not headed back to Pearson-Hardman.

Harvey rolls his eyes because -- really? The kid seriously thought he was going to make him take his bike home at this hour? “It’ll be fine,” he says, exasperated.

“You sure? Because you really don’t strike me as the trusting type.”

“You leave anything sensitive in it?”

“Well, no, but--”

“Then it’s fine. You can pick it up tomorrow if you’re that worried about it.”

Mike doesn’t answer, just sighs and tips his head back against the window. For a moment Harvey actually lets himself believe that Mike’s been sufficiently distracted from all those unasked questions knocking around inside his head, but then they catch a red light. And another. And then another. And Harvey’s hand on the wheel clenches white-knuckled and the leather on the gearshift groans beneath his iron grip. He’s _tired_ , he has a headache, and he wouldn’t be crawling along between first and third through an endless string of lights like this if his associate wasn’t too damn noble for his own good -- and now Mike’s looking at him again, frown on his lips and that little worried crinkle he sometimes gets between his eyes when he’s trying to puzzle something out. And just like that, Harvey decides he’s too far gone to endure the scrutiny on top of everything else.

“Oh, would you just _ask_ , already?”

“What?” Mike squeaks, obviously not expecting to be called on how horribly unsubtle he really is.

“You suck at thinking quietly, and you obviously want to ask, so...” he gestures lazily with the hand that had been resting on the shift, but then the light turns green and he has to put it back to use again.

“Do you really pay for the venue every year?” Mike finally blurts, like he’d have lost his nerve if he did get it all out in one big rush.

Harvey blinks, incredulous. “Seriously? I give you _carte blanche_ to ask whatever and _that’s_ what you come up with?”

“I figured it was the one question you might actually answer,” Mike replies, unrepentant.

Harvey’s lips twitch in what might have been a grin on any other day -- _sharp kid_. He really can’t fault the logic. “So which questions did you think I _wouldn’t_ answer, then?”

Mike doesn't miss a beat. “You mean besides the one I just asked?”

 _Touché_.

“Besides that.”

He’s expecting another quick retort. What he gets is a thoughtful, protracted silence -- until all of a sudden, Mike’s speaking.

No. Not speaking. _Reciting_. Like this is just another day at the office and he’s giving a summation of their latest case or client troubles.

“They say Special Agent Lowell suffered a traumatic brain injury while on the job,” he begins, and Harvey’s fingers clench and flex again against the steering wheel. “But they don’t say how. Or when. But that was the sixth memorial poker tournament for TBI research, and you don’t memorialize someone until they’re dead, so that means he lived for a while after he got hurt.”

Harvey stays silent. And after a moment Mike does not. Not that Harvey expects him to. He knows better by now.

“They also say there was a law suit, _pro bono_ , that sunk the home health agency that had been treating him out-patient. But they don’t name the agency, or the lawyer, or say what the allegations were. They do say though that the tournament is organized by a non-profit based in the city, but small local non-profits can’t exactly afford the Millennium Hotel. And apparently the hot shot lawyer who represents them was Lowell’s roommate at Harvard.”

When Mike’s done you could cut the silence with a knife. With a _machete_. It’s thick and messy and uncomfortable and lasts until their miraculous stretch of seven green lights dead ends in another red. When the car stops again Harvey sighs, and deliberately unclenches everything except his foot on the clutch. He’s _exhausted_ , and in the quiet his thoughts are not good company.

...But Mike _is_ , though. Surprisingly. The realization sweeps over him with all the force of a bursting dam on the river denial, and once the shock wears off he's absolutely furious with himself for the fact, because it means his own subconscious has been operating in bad faith this entire time and clandestinely enough that it took him braking hard on the _other_ thing he was desperately trying not to think about for the truth to finally surface.

And like a bolt from stormy skies, it strikes him that Mike skipped out on his booty call, not because it would have been impolite to bail, but rather for the fact that he’d picked up enough of the truth over the course of the evening to decide that it was more important to stay available to his asshole of a boss on the off chance that he actually might want to talk it through -- and then just like that, the wave of fury recedes again, just as quickly as it came on, and it leaves Harvey wrung out and sullen in its wake.

Which is likely why he finds himself opening his mouth before he can think better of it. “SUNY,” he says, like it was either concede to that or get hauled up on contempt. “Will married Charlotte the summer before we started Harvard. They lived in this tiny little one bedroom in Everett, just down the street from Teddie’s. Whole block smelt like peanut butter.”

Mike’s silent after that, like maybe he doesn’t know what to say and so would rather not say anything then take a guess and get it wrong. Harvey is grateful for the consideration.

“Thank you,” Mike says eventually, just as Harvey is pulling up in front of his apartment block, and the words are weighty and grave (and weight of the grave) and so not in reference to the ride home that Harvey had already figured Mike had been expecting anyway. It throws him enough that he yanks up on the E-break and drops the car back into neutral so it can idle without stalling, because he can hardly turn to give Mike his full attention with his left foot still jamming down the clutch.

“What for?” he asks, completely baffled and now irritated on top of it, besides, because showing irritation is both easier and safer than copping to the wariness percolating underneath it.

“For telling me,” Mike answers, both genuine and genuinely serious like only Mike can be. “I know you didn’t want to.”

And Harvey _gapes_ , just for a moment, before he can remind himself that Harvey Specter does not gape and so reins himself back in. A change of subject is definitely in order.

“Well, now I’m telling you -- again -- go buy a car. Or next time I’m charging you gas money.”

Mike grins, amused because he doesn’t believe a word of it, and maybe also just as relieved as Harvey is to leave the Twilight Zone behind and return safely to their own reality. The one where they don’t share Hallmark moments between red lights or mistake the other for a friend.

“ _Goodnight_ , Harvey,” Mike says as he opens the door. Harvey is pretty sure he learned that odd tone of stern indulgence from his grandmother, and he laughs at the image of a very young Mike trying to wheedle his way into staying up passed his bedtime, probably for the sake of the novel that taught him how to evade the cops -- and then the car door is slamming shut and Mike is fishing his keys out of his pocket as he walks away.

Harvey watches him go, watches until he lets himself into the building and disappears from sight.

“Yeah...” he sighs into the empty space. “Yeah, I guess it was.” Then he shifts back into gear, releases the break, and drives off into the night.


	5. Chapter 5

The fifth time it's a Tuesday night, somewhere between the end of normal business hours and the start of the first run on the midnight oil. It's been a busy day, full of scut-work and the usual legal drudgery, which granted is generally more the norm than the exception around here, but on the other hand it's also been Mike’s first full day off since joining the firm, which means it's the first day of scut-work and legal drudgery that Harvey’s had to endure _in loco servus_ since his promotion.

Really, he _supposes_ he could have commandeered another associate’s services for the day -- what the _Cunnus punicea_ lack in imagination they generally make up for in sheer work ethic -- but then again, if he’d actually _wanted_ just another mindless/dickless/spineless brown-nosing Crimson cutout content to base their careers on their educational pedigree rather than anything of any actual value outside an interview suite then he would have hired one in the first place, instead of staking his job, his reputation, and his license on -- well, pretty much their exact opposite, really.

Unfortunately, as high-minded (high-assed on his high-horse) as his refusal was that morning, by the end of the day Harvey found himself (grudgingly, frustratingly) aware of why Jessica had been so insistent that he hire his own associate. Or really why every senior partner isn’t so much as encouraged to do so but rather is required by employment contract, because unfortunately the Designated Underlings clause isn’t just the privilege of rank he’d taken it for. No, instead it's a basic necessity for the job, and Harvey could have kicked himself for not realizing it sooner. After all, the senior partners handle the biggest clients and the most lucrative deals _in addition to_ all their prior obligations -- so why the hell hadn’t he anticipated this order of magnitude increase in the general _suck_ that is his job at times?

...No. Actually, he knows _exactly_ why. It’s just that the knowing does absolutely nothing for his present mood. If anything, it makes it worse.

Because Harvey, up to his elbows in contract revisions and with Jessica breathing down his neck to “ _stop dicking around and get it done, already, before I bench you and give Lance/McDougal to someone else_ ,” is secure enough in his manhood to admit that maybe, possibly, there’s a chance he’s been taking his associate for granted, that somewhere along the line he’d gotten used to having an extra set of eyes and hands and boots for legwork. That -- straight up -- Mike Ross has _spoiled_ him when all the while he’d been pretty much convinced that things were running the other way around. Not exactly a pleasant realization, by any means. But it's out there now and Harvey can’t exactly take it back.

And whether or not the blame is justified ( _not_ ; not hardly) the kid isn’t exactly here to speak in his defense. Not that there really _is_ a defense for always going above and beyond to try and make his boss’ job easier, but still. Harvey’s tried him _in absentia_ and found him guilty on all counts for his part in today’s headache, and that makes him feel a little better. Not much, but some.

But regardless, he’s had to endure the day without his handpicked _wunderkind_ , and the (sudden, involuntary) adjustment back to his previous (and previously preferred) _status quo_ turned out to be a lot harder than it should have been, even in light of his new-found respect for the more successful senior partners. Jesus, but it’s almost enough to make him wonder if his (bright, clear) memories of his own solitary brilliance aren’t all tainted by revisionist history.

 _Almost_.

Because Harvey’s ego isn’t in the habit of writing checks that his much lauded Harvard-bred J.D. can’t cash -- the evidence is there if he looks for it, no matter that his best witness is faltering under cross-examination -- and yes its useless (and petty; and unbecoming), but that still doesn’t stop him from cursing his associate’s name for such a non-consensual realignment of his personal _modus operandi_ , at least in the privacy of his own thoughts.

Or the semi-privacy of his own office after each and every “ _just checking in_ ” call from Jessica.

Bitch.

Though he means that with all due affection, of course. (And will _eviscerate_ anyone (else) who dares to slander her good name. Unless he’s too busy cheering her on to bother with participating. Chivalry might not be dead but it sure as hell fell out of fashion when the damsels starting slaying their own dragons.)

Really, the problem with working for your former -- mentor? advocate? professional role-model _cum_ drill sergeant in pencil skirts and killer heels? -- is that they are chronically incapable of trusting that you don’t actually need an extra set of grown-up hands to wipe your own grown goddamn ass, no matter that they were the one to teach you how. Harvey never understood that -- and resented the hell out of it, besides -- until of course that fateful day when Mike Ross blundered into someone else’s interview and so subsequently into Harvey’s own neatly tailored life, because it’s been long enough now that he’s seen the view from the other side.

Well, _mostly_ seen it, because he likes to think that he was never that much of a fuck up even when he _was_ a fuck up, but still. He’s pretty sure, now, that it isn’t so much about trust as it is personal investment: it takes a special kind of idiot to not give a damn about a project you spent years developing after it leaves your hands, Harvey knows full well.

He has more than a few such idiots on retainer.

And Jessica Pearson is many things, but ‘idiot’ is far from one of them (and thank God for that. She’s done far too much for him, before Harvard and after, for the idea of jumping ship to work for a competitor to hold any appeal, but he couldn’t have (shouldn’t have, _wouldn’t_ have) stayed with her so long if he was constantly questioning her intelligence along with her managerial style. Which pretty much means he would have had to leave New York, and -- yeah. No. Just no) and that’s the one caveat that’s so far kept him from losing his temper with her hovering. Lord knows he’s ridden _Mike’s_ ass hard enough that it’s a wonder the kid can still sit down, and _sympathy_ is a professional liability that he’s (mostly) trained himself out of, but fuck, _empathy_ still gets him. Every time.

Which is why he really can’t hold it against the kid for not being here today. Oh he’ll proclaim loudly and long (or he would the minute he loses all sense of shame) that Mike’s absence is most if not all the reason he wants to see this day dead and buried already, but that’s as far as it goes. As far as he’ll _let_ it go, no matter how tempting the alternative, because while he might enjoy playing the asshole, just a bit (too much), playing the bastard, on the other hand, is never any fun at all. Unless of course your name is Louis Litt, in which case it's probably because you don’t know the difference. Or that there even _is_ a difference, really.

And then of course there’s the little matter of how he’d ~~practically~~ ordered Mike not to show his face around the office today, because all other considerations are simply academic in light of that. Bastards might have their uses but no one abides a hypocrite.

The problem started yesterday, 4:37 a.m. if you want to be specific (and Mike had wanted to. Or maybe he had _defaulted_ to; Harvey’s private quest to unearth -- and then, if necessary, overwrite -- the kid’s defense mechanisms is still very much a work in progress). That’s when Mike said he’d received a call from his grandmother’s nursing facility alerting him that they were shipping her out to SIUH in the back of an ambulance. Mike had biked there (“ _because I didn’t want to wait for a cab_ ”) and then spent the next four hours with her in the ER while various doctors and nurses and technicians tried to figure out “ _just what the hell is going on_.”

Mike’s words, not his, and conveyed via the harried, hurried, I-will-not-panic-until-they-give-me-reason voicemail Harvey’s phone recorded at precisely 6:50 a.m. while its owner was enjoying a post-workout shower. The kid had meant it as an explanation for why he was most definitely going to be late that morning, if not absent entirely, and Harvey, figuring Mike is boyscout enough to keep his phone off inside a hospital, sent back an acknowledging text (because texts are both quicker easier to check and not at all because they’re also a heck of a lot less personal. Really).

Though in hindsight, THAT SUCKS KEEP ME POSTED might not have been the best reply.

The beauty -- or the flaw, depending -- of the written word is how very much it can be left wide open to interpretation. Every lawyer knows this already; ditto anyone who’s ever gotten into a pointless argument over a poorly worded email. And while “that sucks” is pretty straight-forward (it could be in reference to the grandmother’s predicament or a lamentation over the upcoming lack of his associate’s company and Mike will pick whichever version makes him feel better to little or no consequence) but “keep me posted”? Not nearly specific enough. Harvey should have known better.

Hell, he _does_ know better. It’s just that sometimes he forgets that Mike is shit at reading people.

And his tired, worried, overwrought, _memorizing every last publication on geriatric medicine does not make you a doctor anymore than memorizing every last legal publication makes you a lawyer_ associate had figured “keep me posted” meant “on your grandmother’s condition” and not “on whether or not you think you’ll make it into work today.” Which is how Harvey knows she spent four hours in the emergency room, seven hours in a semi-private room, almost three hours in an OR suite, and then all the rest in the cardiac wing of the ICU.

And that was yesterday.

Harvey had received his first answering text a little after eight: WILL DO. &FYI HSPTAL COFFEE SUX HRDCRE. Which was fine. Nothing out of the ordinary or even remotely suggestive of a prior error in translation. But then the next text came in at 9:15.

DRS KNOW LOTS OF WHAT ITS NOT. STILL NO CURE 4 BAD COFFEE

Harvey had figured his associate was probably just letting off steam. Not an unforgivable transgression, even if a slightly unprofessional one, and given the circumstances he hadn’t minded cutting the kid some slack on that. And if his answering text had been a link to the google maps directions to the nearest Starbucks? Well it still isn’t _good_ coffee, but even that has to be better than hospital swill. And it wasn't an act of kindness so much as it was an act of basic human decency: bad coffee is a blight on existence that everyone has a right to protection therefrom.

The next text came an hour later: BEST GUESS=GALLSTONES. TESTS 2 CONFIRM. Only Harvey had been in conference with Jessica and representatives from McDougal Software so he didn’t get it until almost lunchtime, and by then two more had come in. The first -- FINALLY GETTING A BED -- came just after 10:30. The second, at 11:17, was a picture of a pair of venti carryout, both personalized in black sharpie. One read “TY” and the other “ILU MAN.”

Again, not exactly appropriate text etiquette when the recipient is _your boss_ , but Harvey had been too preoccupied with wondering if Mike actually keeps sharpies with him on his person or if he’d asked the barista to write it special to care all that much. Which, granted, is _also_ not appropriate, but whatever. Not that he’ll ever admit it, but Harvey actually likes that he’d been able to help, however insignificant said assistance had been in the overall scheme of things.

Besides, the pic had made him smile.

He hadn’t bothered to reply, and then the next message hit a little passed 12:30. VERDICT=GALLSTONES. SENTENCE=SURGERY. TIME TBA.

News like that probably warranted _some_ sort of response, but Harvey couldn’t really think of anything appropriate to say so he just sent off a duplicate of his original text:

dup: THAT SUCKS KEEP ME POSTED.

He’d figured Mike probably would anyway.

What he hadn’t thought of though was that Mike would call him half an hour later from the back of a cab, saying that his grandmother’s surgery was scheduled for 6:00 and -- quote -- “ _your boss didn’t hire you to sit around and watch me nap, so shoo already_.” Or something to that effect, anyway. Vocal impressions of elderly women clearly aren’t numbered among Mike’s many talents.

So Mike blew into Harvey’s office forty minutes later, looking very much a nervous (train-) wreck. Grungy sneakers, lived-in jeans, black tee-shirt advertising a band Harvey has never heard of, and no messenger bag in sight. “Well, I’m here,” he’d said. “Put me to work.”

Harvey had taken all that in, along with the way the bags below his eyes stood out like twin bruises on his unshaven face and his hair stuck up like a bad case of bedhead had gone four rounds with anxious fingers -- and asked quite seriously, “how the hell did you get passed security?”

“Oh, ha, ha,” went Mike’s sarcastic little laugh-that-isn’t. “I’ve got four hours to kill, but if you don’t have anything for me I’m pretty sure Louis will.” And no, he wasn’t bluffing.

As stated, Harvey reads people like Mike reads books, and that’s how he knew the kid was so desperate for busywork that he really _would have_ gone to Louis if Harvey couldn’t deliver. Thus _ipso facto_ Mike was so desperate to escape his own head for a bit that he didn’t much care where he landed. And as much as Harvey would’ve liked to have seen Louis’ face the minute he caught sight of Mike looking like some hipster hobo, he really didn’t feel like trusting Louis to let the kid get a word in edgewise before the scathing started. Right then Mike had looked like he would have lost to a stiff breeze. He didn’t need scathing.

Or Louis, for that matter.

Which was why Harvey parked Mike on his couch and, one quick phone call later, had six boxes of file folders delivered to his office.

“That’s a three hundred million dollar class action lawsuit, batted back and forth in court for the past four years. It goes before the judge again in three weeks. Think you can find me something useful in three hours?” It was his best mocking, needling, beard-the-lion tone.

Mike looked up at him and _grinned_.

For his part, Harvey had only smirked (score another for the people-reader) and left him to it.

A brief chat with Donna ensured the kid would be left alone for the duration -- after all, he’d shot down Mike’s offer to change into his spare suit, graciously leasing space in Harvey’s office closet (“ _for four hours?_ ” he’d scoffed. “ _Not worth the dry-cleaning bill_ ”) so therefore it was on him to make sure no one else could stumble into Offensively Casual Monday and raise a fuss about it. And while Mike’s little confused frown at that had worried him a bit -- how often did the kid take his suits to the cleaners? Harvey made a note to find out, and preferably before Rene or there’ll be hell to pay -- at least he gave in without snarking about Harvey’s seemingly uncharacteristic leniency on the dress code.

But as to whether or not Mike actually succeeded in finding something useful, only time will tell. The documents were apparently all read, highlighted where appropriate, and marked all over in the margins with barely legible chicken scratch, but when Harvey had breezed back into his office three hours and twenty minutes later Mike was already cleaning up; documents slipped back into files stuffed back into folders packed back into boxes.

(And -- six boxes in three hours translates to one box every thirty minutes, give or take. Granted, not all the boxes were completely full, and not all the pages therein were densely printed, but still. _Still_. It makes Harvey wonder if speed-reading and eidetic memories go hand in hand, or if Mike’s just doubly blessed.)

“That read like a bad Woody Allen movie,” Mike said as he finished, and laughed a bit like it was a joke that actually made sense. Harvey, who hasn’t the pleasure of that particular case yet (and who probably _won’t_ ; he’d chosen it not for its necessity but rather its size and convenience -- Anderson was out that day and he never locks his office -- and well, it never hurts to have one of the more _senior_ senior partners owe him one), had manfully refrained from asking what he meant by that.

He's pretty sure he wouldn’t want to know.

What he’d done instead was order the kid to hurry up -- he had a client meeting in forty-five and if Mike wanted a ride to the ferry they had to leave five minutes ago. Fortunately Mike had been too grateful for the offer to wonder where the sudden generosity came from, though if pressed Harvey could have always said that sparing people from the not so tender mercies of New York City cabbies ranks right up there with helping them escape the perils of bad coffee on the sliding scale of acceptable public services, because it’s mostly true, but really it’s just that he didn’t want to deal with his conscience as he jumped into the back of his town car while Mike was stuck trying to hail a cab in the rain.

He’d delivered the kid to the Staten Island Ferry, which put him fifteen minutes late for his meeting, but then the client was a grandfather himself so a sincere apology and the truth for a change instead of one of Harvey’s patented excuses and the actual meeting got pushed back another half an hour on top of that as sympathy became applause for a dutiful grandson became lament for missed time with his own grandkids became a BlackBerry slide-show of the youngest’s recent ballet recital -- and all with the meter still running on the billable.

Yes, he felt bad for Mike’s situation, but that was hardly going to stop him from using it to the best of his advantage. Lemons into lemonade and all that.

Then from the meeting it was back to the office for the finishing flourishes, then home with Thai carryout and a beer or two over the last three innings of the Yankees game. They were on top of the Red Flops by four, and Rivera was closing, which meant that by the end Harvey was as close to zen as he ever really got.

But then his phone buzzed for an incoming text. Harvey grabbed for it without thinking, because he’d been half expecting Mike to update him when his grandmother was through her surgery -- but that was supposed to be at six and there it was after eleven and it really didn’t take 5 hours to remove a gallbladder, did it? But those thoughts didn’t catch up to him until after he’d already opened the message.

TOOK MI ON TABLE. NO DETAILS YET. IN CICU BTWN TESTS.

And, well, shit.

 _Shit_.

In the privacy of his penthouse apartment Harvey had allowed himself the luxury of acknowledging the thorough and effective ruination of his evening. Sure Mike’s was obviously running exponentially worse, but then Mike wasn’t there to get offended by the momentary indulgence of his inner selfishness so Harvey took a good two minutes to wallow in the knowledge that he was likely going to be flying solo at work for the next little while before he got his act together and thought out a reply.

Which really didn’t require that much thought at all, come to that, because even teetering between stark self-awareness and the comforting bed of the river denial he wasn’t _completely_ heartless. Well, that and apparently his inner bitchiness had already made the decision for him.

dup: THAT SUCKS KEEP ME POSTED. & TAKE 2MORROW. FMLA IF U NEED MORE TIME

Which is how Harvey found himself at the end of a long, lonely, miserable Tuesday; his first without his associate. He’d alerted Jessica, because she liked to be kept apprised of such things, and he’d alerted HR, in case Mike wound up needing that FMLA paperwork or, worse, _bereavement leave_ , and then he’d practically barricaded himself in his office with only Lance/McDougal and Jessica’s semi-constant badgering for company.

Well, that and Donna’s regular coffee deliveries, every ninety minutes like clockwork. And Louis had knocked sometime in the middle of the afternoon to ask -- and with genuine concern, no less -- if the rumors were true, but really that was it. And Louis hardly counted as company anyway.

In Louis’ defense though, he _did_ bring the rumor to Harvey’s attention, and that plus the rare glimpse of Louis’ human side (so rare that Harvey often forgets he has one) was enough to keep the wretchedly timed interruption mostly civil in exchange. Thus Harvey learned that the office grapevine was living down to its usual impersonation of a second grader’s game of _telephone_ and so was happily gossiping away that Mike’s grandmother was already dead, and that also maybe possibly she died as a result of nursing home negligence and Harvey was actually holed up in his office plotting litigational vengeance on his associate’s behalf.

Since Louis was one of the few people here who knew enough about Harvey to know the rumor had strength of precedent, his (soft-tempered, guileless) visit served as equal parts fishing and head’s up and, after Harvey’d set him straight, an affirmation that the Supreme Overlord of Associates will not contest an appropriate leave request -- and also a promise to quash the rumor at its source, which meant that some HR peon’s day was about get a whole lot worse. Truth? That little moment of solidarity between him and his nemesis had been the highlight of Harvey’s entire day.

And since there’d already been so many _lowlights_ he’d decided to take that as a sign that Karma didn’t hate him completely.

Though just what the hell Her beef with _Mike_ was, he honestly had no clue. But it was starting to piss him off.

The kid’s first update came through his phone just after 1:00 am, after Harvey had already gone to bed.

WTF NO RESULTS TIL BUSINESS HRS. HSPTLS RUN 247. WTF *ARENT* BUSINESS HRS?

Then at 2:00: WANT TO KICK ME OUT TOLD THEM 2 GO SCREW

At 2:21: KNO ANY GUD LATE BARS?

At 2:36: HOW BOUT DINERS?

At 3:10: O RIGHT GUESS UR SLEEPING. SRY.

At 3:37: GRAMMY WOKE UP RECOGNIZED ME ONLY AWAKE A MIN BUT YAY GOOD SIGN

Then, mercifully, silence. Harvey had hoped it meant the kid had finally gone to bed himself. He’d be no use to his grandmother if was asleep at the wheel when either she or the doctors actually needed him.

And thankfully the inundation had ended on a positive note and so spared Harvey the useless speculation as to whether or not he’d dropped the ball as the kid’s last lifeline to sanity. Because -- he felt for Mike, he really did, but -- what on earth did the kid expect him to _do_ , exactly? Stay up and trade commiserating texts when he had to be at work early the next morning? Mike wasn’t generally that much of an idiot, but then he truly did have a good reason to be out of his right mind. Harvey could forgive him that, he supposed.

Its not like the constant texting had kept him up or anything.

He’d sent his reply just after six, right before he left for the health club, and so what if it was distinctly lacking in platitudes? It was a list of three early-open breakfast places near(ish) the hospital, complete with direct links to their menus and their locations already plotted for GPS. And actions speak louder anyways.

Mike’s reply came at 7:06 while Harvey was still stripping his boxing gear. NO NEWS=GOOD NEWS. ALSO HSPTL CHAIRS=TORTURE DEVICES. The next landed at 8:20, just as he was settling in at the office, and it was a picture of the customer copy of a restaurant credit card bill. The signature line read “U R the best boss EVAR!” and it made Harvey wince, both for the fact that Mike actually hand-wrote chat-speak and for what the sentiment said about the kid’s employment experiences to date. Seriously, it’s not like Harvey paid for the meal or anything, but whatever.

He had it writing. The advantage was his.

And the updates had kept coming in while Harvey worked. He always checked them, because much as his mind had shied away from the thought there still had been the distinct possibility that one of them would tell him that Mike’s grandmother was _dead_ (and for all he didn’t know what exactly he would do should the worse happen while he was neck deep in merger contracts he’d still figured it would be better if he was informed sooner rather than later) but he didn’t always reply, and that had less to do with how he really didn't know what he should say (or how to say it, even if he had some clue) and more to do with the fact that most of Mike’s texts really didn’t require responses anyway.

Thus 9:03’s CAN I HAS BUSINESS HRS NAO PLZ? was met with silence, and so was 9:47’s F-ING DRS R WORSE THAN F-ING LAWYERS. But 10:30’s MORE BLOODWORK DUNNO WHY THEY’RE BEING CAGEY he couldn’t ignore. He didn’t bother asking whether or not Mike had medical proxy and/or power of attorney rights for his grandmother (or if she hadn’t already been declared _non compos mentis_ before this) and skipped right to:

DID SOMEONE FORGET WHAT THEY DO FOR A LIVING?

Because it wouldn't be the first time.

The reply came in at 10:45: SHORT VERSION=MI MIGHT NOT BE ONLY PROBLEM. Harvey had been tempted to ask for the long version, because -- Jesus, what now? But then he’d decided there was really no point borrowing trouble, especially trouble that he'd be ill-equipped to deal with in any sense. He knew enough to figure that something else had pinged when they were running the initial post-infarction tests, but unless it was something that pinged false-positive Harvey couldn't think of a single answer that wasn't life-altering, catastrophic, or both. And Mike likely knew even better than him, so inviting the kid to speculate would be nothing short of cruel, and while Harvey would be the first to admit that cruelty has its uses, too, this was hardly one of them.

That and he figured the long version was bound to come out sooner or later anyway.

Like while he’d left his phone behind on a long walk to the men's room.

GOOD NEWS=MINIMAL HEART DAMAGE. BAD NEWS=CANCER

The cold sub lunch Donna had picked up for him had been rather unappetizing after reading that.

He’d updated Jessica during her next check-up call, and she’d managed to sound both sympathetic (for Mike) and annoyed (for the poor timing) before grilling him on his progress again. And he’d updated Donna during her next coffee delivery turned “ _eat your damn lunch Harvey -- you paid for it_ ” visit. And he’d informed Louis, when Louis stopped by, because his sudden attack of decency deserved some reciprocal honesty. Then and only then did he actually reply to Mike, almost an hour later, because yeah he may be great at reading people but he's still absolute _shit_ at relating to them. Thankfully though it's one flaw he both acknowledges and makes a conscious effort to plaster over with deliberate proactivity. Case and point:

dup: THAT SUCKS KEEP ME POSTED. ALSO LOUIS WILL ENDORSE WHATEVER TIME YOU NEED.

There’d been a protracted silence after that, which had been good for Harvey’s need to get things done, but not so much for his overall peace of mind. He hadn’t worried, because worry is by nature useless in the extreme, but “cancer” had lodged like kernel corn in the small back corner of his mind devoted to all things not work and his thoughts kept straying to it every time he paused for breath. As a diagnosis it's as vague as it is abjectly terrifying, but the best cure for both is information and so, ironically, the one time he actually _wanted_ his phone to buzz was the one time it stayed frustratingly silent.

But then, just after five: SHORT ANSWER=LEUKEMIA. SENTENCE=3-5 YRS AVG.

Harvey had still been staring at the screen, trying to wrap his mind around a prognosis that was actually better than he’d been expecting (though in all fairness his accumulated knowledge on the subject was more than ten years out of date) when the phone went off again. Another text.

LONG VERSION, the words themselves an embedded link to a mostly useless wikipedia article, but at least Harvey had a face to put to the allegation. But before he could think much beyond: _right, so_ \--

Another text came in.

SRY 4 DOUCHEPEDIA. SPECLSTS GAVE ME HRDCPY.

And, alright, Harvey had already guessed as much. And was it wrong that he grinned at “douchepedia”? He didn’t think so. But mostly he didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to say in response, and for all that he was almost growing used to the sensation it hardly meant he was any closer to tolerating it.

He was halfway through typing up a suggestion that Mike jump through whatever hoops were necessary to get his grandmother listed as a dependent on his insurance -- because it was a non-starter that the firm gave better coverage than whatever cheap shit subsidized plan she was probably floating at the moment and proactivity trumped empty platitudes every damn time -- but then his phone went off again.

GOOD NEWS=OUTPATIENT=NO STAY IN ONC. CICU->RGLR ROOM->HOME

And -- _again_ \-- good to know, but then also frustratingly vague in terms of logistics. Which meant that Mike was likely parroting whatever the so-called specialists had said, because he was usually a lot better on the follow-through. Which _also_ likely meant that the combination of events and general exhaustion had knocked him so far off his game that it was all he could do to just _react_ , let alone act independently with any semblance of thought. And that's a dangerous head-space to be in, especially if everyone else was looking to you for informed decisions.

And Harvey barely had time to internalize _that_ dissatisfying little nugget before Mike was at it again.

&DID I EVR SAY TY FOR HIRING ME? CUZ SRSLY. TY FROM ME&GRAMMY. SRSLY.

And that was pretty much just thumb-tipped babbling, right there. And text might be impersonal and full of space for creative interpretation but fuck if Harvey could see any other explanation than the sudden unraveling of the kid’s last nerve. After all, he’s heard Mike panic in person before, and to his mind hearing it vicariously in all-caps abbreviations wasn’t that much different. And confronted with hard evidence of the fact, Harvey couldn’t in good conscience just sit back and watch it happen.

And he had Mike at #5 on speed dial.

Mike picked up on the second ring.

“ _Harvey?_ ” he squeaked, his voice high and thin and yeah, definitely belly up in the middle of a tailspin. “ _I was just--_ ”

“Michael.” The precedent-breaking use of the kid’s full given name brought him up short, just as Harvey had known it would. And when he spoke again he made sure to keep his voice calm and measured in that talk-the-crazy-off-the-ledge timber that’s served him well with high-strung clients and, hopefully, dangerously fraying associates. “Stop. _Breathe_. And listen to me.” _Pause_. “Are you listening?”

“ _Uh -- yessir?_ ”

“Good. First -- yes or no. Is your grandmother currently listed on your insurance?”

“ _...Yes._ ”

“Alright. Now, how long do the doctors think she’ll have to stay in the hospital?”

“ _I--_ ”

“Quantitative answer.”

“ _...They don’t know._ ”

Crap. “Bare minimum, then.”

“ _Really, they don’t know. She could have left tomorrow if she didn’t have the heart attack, which pushed it back a week, and--_ ”

“Mike--”

“ _\--now with the blood thinners and the blood_ disorder _and--_ ”

“ _Michael_.” And the given name was two for two. Harvey would have to be careful not to overuse it, lest the kid develop a tolerance. “So at least a week, then. Right?”

“ _...yeah. I -- yeah. At least._ ”

“Ok then. That means you have a week to get your shit together.”

“ _Well, yeah, but--_ ”

“But what? You have a week to conduct independent research before you have to worry about the next step. A week, Mike. You can down a thousand pages of hard copy in -- what? Twelve hours?”

A full eight-second pause, then: “ _ten_ ,” but the word was half-smothered in a sigh. “ _Yeah. Yeah, ok._ ” And if that sigh wasn’t proof enough Mike was starting to reacquaint himself with common sense then the words were definitely corroborating evidence.

“Good. Now, go be a dutiful grandson and stop panicking all over my inbox.”

Mike’s laugh was slightly breathless, but at least it sounded genuine enough. Another win. And on that note, Harvey ended the call before Mike’s emotions could hijack the conversation any more than they already had. He still had a mountain of work to get through before he could even consider calling it a night.

So, predictably, his phone buzzed in another text, not twenty seconds later. THANK YOU. SERIOUSLY SERIOUS HERE. I MEAN IT. And the absence of chat-speak meant he probably did.

Harvey didn’t bother to reply, despite how tempting “stop texting me, damn it!” sounded in the hypothetical sense. He’d gone out on a high note, after all. Would be a shame to ruin it.

After that he’d gone back to slaving away at the Lance/McDougal merger contract, until finally pronouncing it “done enough for now” a little after nine p.m. Not that it was _actually_ done, but it was more than halfway there, and Harvey was absolutely certain that if he had to stare at it for one more minute his professionalism would seriously suffer for it and the work itself would follow quickly thereafter. Besides, Jessica herself had left promptly at seven, anyway.

And it was a whim, more than anything, that had him calling Mike again before he actually left the building. Just because Louis was prepared to be generous in granting Mike’s leave, his indulgence certainly wouldn’t stretch so far as to include tardy or improper paperwork, which translated into his associate really needed to stop by the office sometime tomorrow to take care of it.

But of course, Mike didn’t pick up.

He’d tried his landline next, on the off chance the kid had actually gone home to sleep, but he didn’t answer there either, and on second thought the odds that Mike had actually left the hospital while his grandmother was under close cardiac monitoring were negligible at best, which meant he was still there, either asleep or with his phone switched off. Or both. So that left sending another text -- and Harvey had every intention of doing so -- except when he got to his car he found himself instead typing Staten Island University Hospital into his GPS.

Strangest thing.

And now here he is, roaming the labyrinthine hallways of SIUH in a three-piece suit, trying to find the correct set of elevators to take him up to CICU.

It had been laughably easy to get this far: the suit and the flash of his ABA card had convinced the aide manning the check-in desk in the ER -- which had been the only information hub guaranteed to be opened this late at night -- that he's Michael Ross’ attorney, lately summoned to his dying grandmother’s bedside, somewhere in cardiac intensive care, only the distraught grandson hadn’t given said grandmother’s full name but really, how many elderly female Rosses in CICU since yesterday can there be?

Never mind that he wasn't even sure she was his paternal grandmother and not his maternal one, or even a step-grandmother or God-grandmother or -- fuck -- _fairy_ God-grandmother, for all he knows. He's never asked, and Mike never clarified, but for once Fortune erred on the side of benevolence.

Too bad he hadn’t thought to ask for directions while he was it at it, but then a helpful orderly set him to rights.

So now here he is, just a few minutes shy of ten p.m, lurking at the threshold of a semi-darkened single occupancy with the surname _Ross_ printed on the small whiteboard beside the door in big block letters. Cold fingers try to slide along his spine as he lingers -- _that_ name, _this_ place, and the memory of how wrecked the kid had looked the last time he'd laid eyes on him -- but they don't travel very far. He has better control than that. Instead he takes in the bank of monitors -- common sense and clear labeling tell him what most of the numbers mean; however, he has no reference for whether or not the readings are good or bad or in between -- and then the woman in the bed, lying tethered to those monitors and a triple-bag IV. Given what he’s heard -- semi-emergency surgery, heart attack, inevitably terminal cancer -- he’d honestly expected her to look much worse. But there’s color in her cheeks and in her eyelids and in her lips, and she really does look peaceful.

Not _death’s door_ peaceful, but _resting comfortably_ peaceful, and the sight eases a knot of tension that had been buried so deep Harvey hadn’t even been aware of it until suddenly it’s letting go on a soft exhale.

That’s when he sees Mike.

He’d missed him on his first sweep because the kid had dragged the solitary chair into the back corner, where the room is darkest. And that’s where he’s sprawled now: head tipped back to rest against the corner, legs kicked straight out in front of him, hands fisted over the ends of the armrests like he’s holding on for dear life -- and still in yesterday’s clothes.

The subtle warmth that creeps out of Harvey’s veins and into the upturn of his smile would be called affection by anyone else. Harvey merely classes it as further proof that he’s got his associate pegged dead to rights. And he’s tempted -- _really_ tempted -- to turn around and walk straight back out the door. Worse comes to worst he can always call the hospital in the morning and ask for the room extension, get in touch with Mike that way, because on second thought he really doesn’t want to answer the obvious question of what on earth he thinks he’s _doing_ , sneaking into Mike’s grandmother’s CICU suite in the dead of night, because if the kid wakes up and sees him and those aren’t the first words out of his mouth--

But he hesitates a bit too long, and suddenly his secret mission is not so secret anymore. It’s not his associate whom his presence disturbs though. No, instead it's the grandmother -- a woman he’s never actually met before, he realizes in a sudden flash of not-panic-because-Harvey-Specter-doesn’t-panic-ever -- staring right back at him now with calm, clear eyes.

“So,” she says, in a whisper dry as paper and then twice as rough -- “you must be Michael’s boss.”

“Guilty,” he answers with his best ‘charm the new client’ smile, but he can’t keep his gaze from flicking back to Mike, checking if their quiet words have woken him. They haven’t.

Yet.

She hums a bit in answer, both thoughtful and affirming. “Thought so.”

“It’s the suit, isn’t it,” he says, self deprecating, voice softer than his own silk tie.

“And you’re here,” she adds. “Figured you’d show sooner or later.”

Harvey arches an eyebrow, because she sounds so certain. She smiles, gives into a breathless little laugh she really doesn’t have the strength for, and lets her gaze drift back over to her grandson.

“You’ve made quite an impression on him,” she says, and he has to move closer because her voice is fading in and out around the hollows of the words.

“He’s an impressionable kid,” Harvey hedges, because really, what else can he say? Another gentle hum lets him know she isn’t offended by the observation.

“Always has been. ‘s what gets him int’ trouble.” A moment’s pause and then her head is rolling back around, her gaze homing in on Harvey once again. For a moment he sees the ghost of his own mother in that stare, and it takes all of his professional skill not to squirm beneath it. Then, after the precise amount of suspense needed for maximum effect: “how much trouble... you gon’ get... my gran’baby into... Mr. Harvey Specter?”

And shit but that’s an unfair question. In theory he’s already set Mike up for heaps of it, just by virtue of having hired him. But for all he knows Mike could have told his grandmother any lie under the sun to sell the story of his sudden steady paycheck and its requisite wardrobe upgrade -- and really that’s something (another thing) that he should have asked already, but there’s nothing for it now.

“None that I can’t get him out of,” he says: no hesitation, no affect of charm, no trace of the well-worn lie. The words ring true because they _are_ true, pure and simple, and just never mind that he hadn’t realized it himself until he heard them said aloud. The statement has been given in open court. It would be perjury to take it back.

Another, softer hum; more of a snort, really, except for how she lacks the proper breath for one. “Good answer,” she says, but he can’t quite tell if that means she believes him. “Suppose it’ll do... for now.” And again, he can’t quite tell if that well-timed pause for breath had been double-edged or not. For all his lauded skill at reading people, Mike’s grandmother is really something else. Harvey chalks it up to her illness. He’s out of practice in dealing with sick people.

That and a woman more than twice his age is entitled to a few tricks up her sleeve. Especially if she was left alone to ride herd on his associate during his formative years.

“Now... I’m going to pretend... to go to sleep... while you... order my grandson... back to his own bed.”

That’s an edict if Harvey has ever heard one, and one he’s not about to disobey. And on top of that the grin she flashes him, soft and fleeting, once she reads the acquiescence in his eyes, lets him know the polite fiction is for his benefit as much as Mike’s -- and also that she knows he knows she knows, and that she would be laughing at him if only she had the strength for it.

But whatever her intentions she slips back into honest sleep barely a moment later. Harvey watches her for a good minute beyond that, making sure she’s well and truly out, and trying to pin a name on the strange, dull ache he feels for the knowledge that this woman he’s barely met is going to die a slow and medicated death. One case makes for flimsy precedent, but all he’d felt at the revelation that Jessica’s surprise ex-husband has ALS, beyond obvious concern for how that would impact his case, had been a quiet rage that Jessica didn’t deserve that on top of everything else; that the lying, cheating bastard wasn’t through hurting her yet even after she staked her reputation to bail him out of a mess her own replacement had wrought in the first place. Not exactly a firm basis for comparison.

But such thoughts will get him nowhere fast, so he halts the mental tail-chasing on the objection that it’s all irrelevant anyway and turns his attention back to his associate, who doesn’t appear to have moved a muscle in the entire time that Harvey’s been here. Which is unfortunate, because not only does Mike look uncomfortable, but right now his expression is downright _pained_. He isn’t dreaming -- his eyes are still beneath their lids -- but he is frowning, lips pinched down and pulled close in, and the little worry line that forms sometimes between his eyes when he’s truly thinking hard hasn’t quite smoothed out.

Yes, Mike is asleep, but he’s hardly relaxed, and that’s a first for Harvey. It makes him oddly wary. In the end though he goes for broke, and clasps a solid hand on the kid’s shoulder. His _right_ shoulder, in case he comes up flailing, but the precaution is all for naught. There’s a violent twitch and a startled gasp, and then Mike is staring at him, wide-eyed, in recognition.

“Harvey?” he asks, his voice small and frail and disbelieving. It makes him sound so very young -- right before he panics, body arching clean out of the chair on a breathless cry of “Grammy!” and Harvey’s forced to slam his other hand down on Mike’s left shoulder to leverage him back down to sitting again.

“Is _fine_ ,” he says, making sure he’s staring Mike dead in the eye as he does so. He pauses long enough to make sure the kid is fully tracking him, then: “we had a lovely chat while you were out. Apparently my fashion sense precedes me.” The words are calm, and quiet, and conversational, and just inane enough to catch the whole of Mike’s attention. Which is good, because if he’s focused on Harvey, and on the implications of what Harvey’s just said, then he doesn't have room enough to think about anything else. The sudden pause lets him get a toehold back on himself, and Harvey watches as he takes a deep, shuddering breath, and lets it all go on a ragged exhale.

“What are you doing here?” he asks a moment later, and Harvey almost grins because he actually sounds like Mike again. That and the panicked awakening notwithstanding he's still batting a thousand in his little game of anticipate the associate.

“Looking for you,” he says, because it’s true. Then: “I’m under orders to take you home,” because he knows that Mike will ask. And he does. Sort of.

“Huh?”

“You heard me. For an octogenarian half asleep in CICU, your grandmother is one intimidating lady.”

Mike actually smiles at that. A real, honest to goodness _smile_. Harvey is slightly disturbed to realize he can't remember the last time he's seen one on the kid.

“Tell me about it,” Mike says, though the words are distorted by the face-splitting yawn that ambushes him halfway through. “Ugh, what time is it?”

“After ten. Now c’mon. You can come back in the morning. And if you’re a good boy the paperwork fairy will pay you a visit somewhere around lunchtime.”

Mike doesn’t laugh, but there’s no denying the intent is there. At the moment though he’s just too tired to bother. Harvey takes that as his cue and sticks out a hand. Mike latches on, and when Harvey hauls him to his feet this time he’s anticipating the sudden sway and so his other hand catches Mike by the lip of his jeans. He holds on until its clear the spots have faded from Mike’s eyes, and then he lets him go.

“Careful, or they’ll end up giving you the bed next door.”

“Heart’s fine,” Mike counters, shaking his head. “Yours too, apparently. Who would have thought.”

“Shut up and walk,” Harvey grumps, but he can’t quite suppress the grin. It’s the first real sign that his associate is still in there, somewhere, despite life’s latest curve.

Better still is that Mike only half obeys. “You care. Admit it. You kind of have to, now.”

Harvey doesn’t, of course.

Have to, that is. Actions speak louder, and right now strategic silence is much more fun.

“C’mon, Harvey. Admit it. It’s ok. I promise I won’t mock you. Much.”

Harvey chokes his grin back into a smirk, and leads them towards the elevators.


	6. Chapter 6

The sixth time hasn’t happened yet, but Harvey figures it can’t be too far off. “Precedent” has just about tipped over into “trend,” and while that’s slightly worrying in its own right -- a laudable work ethic is one thing, but actually driving yourself into the ground until your body gives up the ghost and just decides to _stay there_ for a while is only counter-productive in the long run -- at least its trending them away from the awkward _morning-after_ ness they’d both suffered through before the pattern was established. And really, that analogy _sucks_ , but right now it's the only one he’s got that comes even remotely close.

Though, Harvey has often wondered if that awkwardness also isn’t a bit one-sided: Mike is such an open book sometimes that seeing through him is almost laughably easy, and while Harvey is more than happy to take shameless advantage of such openness when the kid’s fully conscious, doing the same when he’s asleep rather tiptoes along a line that Harvey generally refuses to cross anywhere outside of active litigation. It always leaves him feeling vaguely uncomfortable, like he’s just witnessed something he knows he's not supposed to see, only instead of giving him the advantage he’d been looking for its actually gone and handed him the very opposite; that instead of coming out ahead he’s stuck with the burden of another secret he can’t unlearn, and worse, one he really would have been better off not knowing.

And Mike, being _Mike_ , has less than half a clue.

See -- it’s not that Mike is prone to tipping his hand so much as he’s (almost) always playing with that hand splayed face up on the table while he throws himself all-in, and that’s bad enough in its own right without the added bonus of how the kid is always so completely oblivious to his own tells on top of it. Makes figuring him just about on par with taking candy from a baby, sometimes, and Harvey has always held a very special loathing for those who stoop so low. His knuckles itch just thinking about it, and that’s part and parcel of why he only lets Mike sit in at the adult table when his presence is either crucial or irrelevant, because it’s less the snub that Mike thinks it is and more the precaution any sensible lawyer would take (and if Mike wasn’t so oblivious, he’d know that; but whatever), because it's one thing for Harvey to read Mike like Mike reads the printed word, but letting the competition achieve the same is absolutely unthinkable. Better to just shoot their whole case in the foot and be done with it. At least then the client would know the hows and whys of where it all went wrong.

(And just _never mind_ that ‘the competition’ has somehow evolved from a euphemism for opposing council until it’s stretched far enough to cover everyone who is not named Harvey Specter. Mike Ross is _his_ associate, thank you very much. Everyone else can just go find their own.)

And Mike’s transparency is an inconvenience, sure, and will continue to be so until such time as Harvey can train him out of it, but it's hardly the whole problem. Or at least it's hardly the whole of _Harvey’s_ problem, because so far it's been looking like Mike sees openness as a virtue, like its somehow a reflection of honesty and should be weighed on the same scale. Like he doesn’t believe that transparency can be _faked_ , or that even the honest truth can still lie through omission. Like he’s never had anyone use his transparency against him, or twist his emotions all around until they’re little more than tools in someone else’s woodshed. Like he’s never seen what happens when his own feelings suddenly become another person’s weapons.

Like not even all the hardships that Mike has faced in life have been able to rob him this one last vestige of innocence, and that’s the _true_ heart of Harvey’s problem, because lately his knuckles have been itching each time he looks in the mirror.

Of course, it wouldn’t matter quite so much if all the cards that Mike keeps flashing aren’t just random pages out of his myriad issues. Most people have layers, Harvey knows well enough -- hell, even _Louis_ has more going on under that “prickly douche” facade than most like to give him credit for -- but Mike Ross? Hell, Mike Ross has _minefields_ , and the more that Harvey maps them the more he comes to realize that an earth-shattering kaboom isn’t likely so much as it is inevitable. And just because Harvey’s got the kid figured to the point that he’ll likely see the explosion coming, that hardly means he’s got him figured enough to see a way around it. Means he has a half decent chance of mitigating the damage, but next to none at all of preventing it in the first place -- and really that just _irks_ him; if for no other reason than the simple fact that explosions are messy. And inconvenient. And often far too generous with the collateral damage.

Because that’s the real thing that Harvey hates. Collateral damage. Causing it, cleaning it, _being_ it -- makes no difference, really. It all leaves the same bad taste in his mouth. And the shit of it is he doesn’t know yet which side of the scale Mike is going to land on in the inevitable aftermath -- and he probably _won’t_ , not until its way too late, and damned if that thought doesn’t get more and more unsettling each time they do this little dance, because -- _damn it_ \-- he _likes_ the kid. He really does. And worse, Mike _knows_ he does (as well he should, after all that Harvey has done for him), and seems to take a rather perverse pleasure in calling him on it whenever the opportunity arises. It would be (even more) annoying, Harvey thinks, if it wasn’t also a visceral manifestation of the kid’s absolute raw need for acceptance and validation.

(At least that sad little fact isn’t connected to any hidden tripwires. Or at least, Harvey’s pretty sure it isn’t. Kid couldn’t be more obvious if he shouted it from the rooftops, but then, just because that’s one issue that Harvey’s read cover to cover, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that he’s committed all its finer points to memory. That’s Mike shtick, not his.)

At first it was useful: the constant and rock-solid assurance that above all else, what Mike really wants is just simply to _matter_ to someone -- wants to _know_ that he matters -- because that’s something that Harvey was absolutely certain he could press to his advantage. Is something that he _did_ press to his advantage, early on. Still does, if he’s honest with himself, which is why he’s starting to get uncomfortable each time he catches his own eye, because it’s long since been obvious that Mike’s decided he wants to matter to _Harvey_ , first and foremost and forsaking all others (save his grandmother).

Harvey isn’t sure if it happened when he first hired Mike (because for the life of him he will never forget the gobsmacked gratefulness that knocked the kid’s face into the biggest, brightest, most genuine smile he’s ever seen on anyone older than six) or if wasn’t until later, say when Mike admitted that Harvey was only the second person to ever tell him what he needed to hear (instead of -- what? Prevarication? Deflection? _Silence_? Harvey honestly doesn’t know; just counts it as circumstantial evidence that he’s only the second person to ever give enough of a damn to be honest with the kid -- no matter that said damn was given more towards his own self at the time -- and doesn’t _that_ explain a lot), but in the end it doesn’t matter. What does matter is the way that Mike refuses to kiss his ass or to not call him out on his shit, but at the same time, will take any order Harvey gives -- will _prioritize_ any order Harvey gives, even if what Louis claims to need him for might be the more technically urgent -- and for no less than 110% every damn time, that he will take and hoard every last fist-bump and modestly good word like each and every one is more precious to him than diamonds.

What does matter is that the reverse is also true, that each reprimand (however earned), each detracting comment (about any subject), each counterpoint that Harvey makes on the “ _do I care?_ ” debate (because _liking_ is not the same as _caring_ , not even close -- unless of course your name’s Mike Ross, in which case you’ll make holding the words synonymous a fucking _lifestyle choice_ ) is almost guaranteed to find a chink in the kid’s armor. What does matter is that Mike will take the earned and use it for the lesson he presumes it was meant as (Harvey will say this for the kid: he only repeats a mistake if it's a mistake he refuses to acknowledge as such), and he’ll take the unearned and chalk it up to either differing viewpoints (on a good day) or the simple fact that his boss is an _unrepentant asshole_ (every time else).

What does matter is that he somehow manages to take everything to heart without letting any of it change a single Goddamn thing. Harvey still isn’t sure quite how he does it.

Once upon a time he and Mike argued about loyalty: owing it, respecting it, using it, _shitting on it_. It hadn’t been a vicious argument (really, they haven’t _had_ a vicious argument; arguments and vicious sniping, yes, but never the two together enough for Harvey to credit it; sometimes he wonders which of them is treating the other with kid gloves), but still. The memory is sour enough that it took Harvey a long damned time (way too long, if you ask him, but then that’s why he hates emotional involvement) to realize -- it wasn’t about loyalty at all. Or rather it _was_ (it _is_ , forever and in perpetuity) but not in the way that either of them thought they meant at the time, because -- truth? It isn’t loyalty that keeps Mike stuck to Harvey’s side like glue, because Mike has never been shy about pointing out that Harvey’s ass-kicking shoes are made entirely of clay. It isn’t loyalty that compels Mike to back any and all of Harvey’s plays, even the ones that make it clear that sometimes they draw their lines in vastly different places, because Mike never hesitates to express his own disappointment like he thinks the sting of it will affect Harvey just as strongly as the reverse. (And it certainly isn’t loyalty, on the back end, that brings this closer and closer to being true.)

It isn’t loyalty that makes Harvey’s opinion matter above all others, including the associates Mike must work alongside and the partners who he should fear way more than he apparently does, because for some reason he’s got it in his head that Harvey can protect him, that the umbrella of Harvey’s employ will shield him from jealous rivals and, worse, that the grace of Harvey’s good opinion will keep him safe from the negations of anyone else in authority. (And it absolutely isn’t loyalty that Harvey _wants_ this to be true, even though he knows it never will be, not completely.)

It isn’t loyalty, Harvey knows -- and _has_ known, ever since Jessica called him on his use of the puppy analogy, and he will never forgive himself for not realizing it sooner -- because _loyalty_ is nothing more than what a puppy feels for its master. And it makes sense, because no matter that the analogy is apt, or inherited, or even a rite of passage, Mike still resents it, just as Harvey had known he would; just as Harvey himself had done when he’d been the one strung out at the end of the metaphorical choke-chain. Because Mike knows what Harvey knows, and that’s that puppies are only loyal by default, and that being called as such implies that he (Mike; _Harvey_ ) will follow without conscious thought, or that each and every time the act of following is not its own deliberate choice.

It isn’t loyalty, they _both_ know, because the deliberate choice to place the whole of one’s self in the hands of another is not loyalty at all: it’s _fealty_. And it makes Harvey’s breath catch in his throat each time he realizes the exact scope of what his associate has gotten him into.

It’s not that he minds responsibility -- he’s a senior partner: weights hanging from every bell and eyes on every whistle, and he’s made every decision with that ultimate status in mind from the moment he grabbed Jessica’s lifeline in both fists and let her haul him back to even keel -- but for all he takes it to his shame each time he thinks “Mike Ross” and “puppy” in the same breath, he still can’t help thinking that -- straight up? A puppy would be so much easier. Because puppies are cute and friendly and willing to show off whatever tricks you teach them in exchange for table-scraps, and after they grow out of their initial excitability and addiction to shoe-leather they’re more than happy to spend their days fetching your newspaper and tearing the ankles off of anyone who looks at you cross-ways and all for the price of a competent dog walker and a daily bowl of kibble. But Mike Ross--

Well. Just because he knows better than to reduce the kid to an anthropomorphized bundle of haphazardry and enthusiasm, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, that still doesn’t change the fact that Mike isn’t quite the grown goddamn man Harvey had requested, either. And Harvey knows -- _knows_ ; because Harvey Specter knows people perhaps better than he knows the law -- that the fault lies squarely with how all the grown goddamn male role-models that Mike has ever had have all come from his beloved books. That Mike was raised in part by Atticus Finch and Jean Valjean and Lyov Myshkin and George Smiley and probably a double dozen others that Harvey can’t winnow from the pack. And teaching a puppy to sit, stay, roll over, and beg is one thing, but teaching a not-kid, not-adult, not-lawyer how to be a man? That’s way more ‘responsibility’ than Harvey bargained for.

And it’s not that he feels out of his depth (except that yeah, it really is, and not just because he has a sinking suspicion that Mike’s peculiar brilliance could dance circles around his own once it actually learns the steps and stops being so worried about tripping over its own two feet) so much as it is that he feels he got _conned_ , that he let Mike talk him into their arrangement -- and then blackmail him into keeping it, not that the application of such didn’t also work immediately in Harvey’s own favor -- without pausing to read any of the fine print. That Mike disclosed his genius, his drug habit, his fall from grace, and his beat-up, rusty pipe-dream because he knew Harvey would see in them the bones of something solid, the raw clay that he could shape to his own liking and for his own benefit -- and both of those were completely true, which was why Harvey had seen them in the first place -- but then _completely true_ is not the same thing as _complete truth_ \-- and yeah. Harvey got conned.

Big time.

And by the time he figured it out, it was already way too late for him to change a Goddamn thing.

So now he’s stuck, full time boss and part time mentor and occasional avenging angel (Trevor, despite his nearsighted idiocy, still had the presence of mind to ask, point blank, if he was right to feel more afraid to be alone with Harvey than he did with his abductors) and way more invested than he should be. Than he _wants_ to be, really, but it doesn’t matter because here’s Mike Ross, perpetual victim of chivalrous thinking, proving day in and day out just how far he’s willing to go to suit the role, like if Harvey were to take a magnifying glass to the kid’s cheap tie-pins he’d find they all read “ _honi soit qui mal y pense_ ,” and _Harvey doesn't know what to do with him_!

Case and point? Last night, after Mike had all but thrown himself into Harvey’s passenger seat (and either didn’t notice or didn’t care that it was the passenger seat of an Aston Martin DB5 -- Harvey’s latest indulgence from the car club -- and so totally shot down Harvey’s plan to restore some levity to their evening by schooling the kid on the finer points of Scottish accents, but whatever) and then pretended to sleep so hard you’d think he was going to be graded on it later, Harvey had spent the whole drive being grateful for the pretense, because if Mike was pretending to sleep then he obviously didn’t want to talk, and so spared Harvey the embarrassment of revealing just how bad he is at this. Not that Mike probably hasn’t guessed by now -- kid’s too bright by far, sometimes; those who dare his orbit run the constant risk of getting burned -- but still.

Still.

They had driven on in silence, Harvey graciously letting Mike get away with his fake sleep like it was a courtesy, a concession to the kid’s needs instead of a reflection of his own, and if he didn’t even consider bringing Mike all the way out to Brooklyn? Well his condo is roughly halfway between the hospital and Mike’s address, so really all he did was spare the kid at least half his cab fare and himself another pointless hour of drive time. Really, why make both their lives more difficult just so Mike can spend less time and more money for the chance to sleep in his own bed? It hardly takes a genius to figure that one out.

 _His_ genius though was a little sleep deprived and lot distracted (or maybe a lot sleep deprived and a little distracted) and so had merely blinked, first at Harvey and then at the unfamiliar surroundings. For all that he’s been to Harvey’s front door before (and just where the kid learned his address, Harvey both does and does not want to know) he’d obviously never been down to the parking garage, and once he’d roused from his not-sleep and taken in the dark and steel and concrete and the fleet of luxury cars owned by the other tenants he’d looked back at Harvey, pale and wide-eyed and _something else_ , something Harvey could quite pin down, and said quite plainly--

“Oh.” Just _oh_ , and it was statement and realization and affirmation, maybe, but it wasn’t a question at all. Harvey had wondered if Mike really hadn’t been surprised by the turn of events, or if after everything else he simply didn’t have the energy for it. Or maybe Harvey’s coming to the hospital had been surprise enough and the rest was put down to _lagniappe_ , but whatever. If Mike didn’t have to ask, then Harvey didn’t have to give an answer, for all he’d rehearsed them along the way, and that was really for the best.

“C’mon,” he’d said, and willed the kid to mistake the relief that bled into his voice at the unexpected reprieve for ordinary, uncomplicated tiredness, though admittedly that wasn’t too far of a stretch. “If my couch isn’t at least twice as comfortable as your crappy Craig’s List mattress then I’m going to have to see about a refund.”

“It’s a good mattress,” Mike had protested, though he’d sounded not a little dazed. “Practically brand new when I got it.”

“Uh huh.” Harvey hadn’t agreed, just let Mike know that he’d heard, and led the way to the private elevator that serviced his suite and the two below it. “By the way. You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

Mike had just sort of _looked_ at him, like he was sure that was a trick question and felt ill done by for the attempt. “No,” he’d hedged, obviously waiting for the punch-line. “Why?”

“Oh, no reason.”

Mike had clearly not believed him, but for whatever reason chose not to make an issue of it. Instead he’d said, “Huh. No buttons,” as he watched Harvey use a key to command the car.

“Well we can’t just let anybody in. Standards and all that.”

Mike had made a distracted little noise -- acknowledgement, maybe? -- but hadn’t said anything further. Instead he’d drifted back into a corner and slumped against it, each hand seeking out the nearest rail, and Harvey had thought briefly of warning the kid to brace himself -- this was an express elevator; the breed was known to play havoc on the delicate systems of the uninitiated -- but on second glance Mike seemed about as braced as it was possible to get so Harvey left it alone. No sense freaking the kid out any more than he doubtless already was.

They’d made the climb in silence, Mike with his eyes screwed shut and his knuckles bone-white on the rails as he fought to master both his shaky legs and the _stomach-meet-toes_ queasiness of a typical ascent, and Harvey too busy watching out for any kind of early warning that his associate was about to lose either his balance or his dinner to even point out the lovely cityscape they were treated to once the car reached the penthouse levels. Which was too bad, really, because usually Harvey enjoyed watching others react to his view.

When the car lurched to a stop Mike’s already too-pale complexion washed out to a worrying shade of sickly green, but a moment of hard-pursed lips and a deep, shuddering breath through his nose and then that was that. He straightened up and pushed off from the wall, though one hand stayed glued to the rail as the reality of his situation finally registered.

“ _Oh_ ,” he’d said again, a soft and reverent echo, and then he’d used his one anchored arm as a pivot point while he took in the full panorama of Midnight Manhattan from the Twenty-Sixth Floor. (He’d slept with an artist, once, (technically a lot more than once) who’d painted it for him, a 32x18 swath of black and white and blue and gray that hangs above his dresser, and now he’s chronically incapable of thinking of the real thing by any other name.)

Then Mike turned back around and fixed Harvey with the cross-eyed exhaustion version of a gimlet stare. “ _No reason_ ,” he’d parroted, bone dry and not-quite-scathing. “Really? What if I’d been lying?”

Harvey shrugged. “Then whatever happened would have been your own damn fault.”

Mike made another inarticulate, sub-vocal sound, one that clearly implied that he didn’t agree, but he hadn’t pressed the issue. “You left your lights on,” he’d said instead, a statement of fact that under any other circumstance might have conveyed a value judgment along with it, but right then it was little more than an observation as the kid exited the elevator and tried his level best to give off the impression of someone not at all impressed with his surroundings. Of course, Mike’s own transparency could give the elevator a run for its money, so it wasn’t a _very good_ impression, but still. Harvey understood the impetus behind the effort.

“Motion sensors aimed at the elevator,” he’d explained -- because he wanted to, mind. Not because the empty threat of Mike’s disapproval actually meant something. “And before you say it, the sensors themselves only turn on when the alarm is armed.” And speaking of, maybe he should head over to the panel and disarm the thing, preferably _before_ it decided this was a break-in and reacted accordingly.

“You do realize that private elevators are the biggest security risks in, like, the history of ever, right?” Mike had asked, his back to Harvey as he drifted through the room, no doubt locking every last detail away for future consideration. Too bad the turn of the conversation forced Harvey to leave the obvious inspection alone for the moment. That and the distinct possibility that the kid was actually deliberately focusing his eidetic memory far away from Harvey's alarm code. Decent of him, and surprising, but somehow not surprisingly decent because it was _Mike_ , after all. Though he might act like he was raised in a barn, at least he was raised a gentleman.

“Your concern is touching--” it wasn’t, but then Mike's comment held more smugness than concern anyway so Harvey didn’t count it-- “but you fake-slept through the ID check at the garage entrance, failed to notice the security cameras trained on each elevator, and didn’t spot the fact that this--” he dangled his keyring by the elevator key-- “is a smart key. Only tenants have them, the elevator motor won’t power on without one, and the RFID only lets the car stop at the designated floor. And that's a hell of a lot more secure than even a series of deadbolts held in place with -- what? -- three-inch wood screws? Please.”

“Give me a weekend,” Mike had said as he finally let himself collapse down onto Harvey’s couch. There was a gentle thrum of _challenge_ simmering below the nonchalance, even as his eyes slipped closed in obvious bliss -- which pretty much proved Harvey’s furniture theory, but he let that one go, too, in favor of the actual conversation at hand. “And you’ll wake up Monday morning to--”

“What? An empty apartment? The elevator may be quiet but it’s not _that_ quiet. I’d hear you coming, and there’s a loaded Glock in my nightstand drawer. And should I remind you that your current occupation does not mesh well with whatever the hell you’re skirting the edges of confessing to?”

Mike had blinked, and paled. “I was going to say _breakfast in bed_ , but. Um. Yeah.” He sighed, brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, and shoved two fingers into his eye sockets like he thought he could just reach inside them and pluck the headache out -- and just like that, Harvey was reminded that while he’s often epic fail at emotional connectivity he still damn well knows how to play the gracious host, even though right then he was pretty much failing at that, too. There was absolutely no excuse, and no doubt his mother wasn’t so much turning in her grave as she was getting ready to reach beyond it to _swat him with a wooden spoon_ if he didn't find a way to fix it, _tout de_ fucking _suite_.

“Look, Mike--” “I guess I’ll just--”

They’d both started together and then stopped short, but Mike was already half way towards levering himself to standing again, and Harvey had had enough.

“ _Leave that couch and you’re fired_!”

Which, ok, one of these days he's going to have to stop crying wolf or else the threat will lose all meaning, but seriously. Mike’s grandmother had trusted him with her grandson’s care, at least until he was seen safely to bed, and Harvey had a sinking suspicion that it would be both their heads if Mike walked out that door. Not that he wasn’t technically defying her already by bringing Mike here instead of the kid’s own place, but he stands by his decision. If nothing else (if _so much_ else, but right then Harvey couldn’t bring himself to face even the smallest portion of it) this was objectively the most convenient for both of them.

And meanwhile Mike had frozen, pale and shaky and skittish and _confused_ , but a second later he lowered himself back down. He didn’t speak, just stared stupidly up at Harvey like he so obviously didn’t know what to think, and Harvey found he couldn’t really blame him. The surreality of the moment was staggering.

And Harvey thought: _sit_ ; and Harvey thought: _stay_ ; and Harvey thought: _can’t be expected to clean up their own messes_ , and that last thought was the one that did him in. He brought up a hand, a useless, abortive gesture; clenched a fist, twitched his wrist, and fought for the right words. “Alright. Here’s what’s going to happen. Guest bath is the second door on the right. I’m going find you something to sleep in, and then you’re going to take a shower. While you’re showering, I’m going to scrounge us something to eat. Then we’re both going to go to bed, and when we wake up in the morning we’re going to pretend that the last five minutes never happened. Deal?”

“I’m sorry,” Mike said, and the fight just seemed to wash right out of him as he said it. “You’re being all--” a vague hand-wave-- “and I’m just--”

“Watching the last shred of stability in your life get knocked horribly sideways?” Harvey answered, and he’d never been so aware of his own tone of voice as he was in that moment. He couldn’t afford to screw this up. “I get it. It’s ok.” Except it wasn't, not really, but Harvey didn't mean that in any way that Mike would know to fear, so the lie was ruled admissible.

“I’m still sorry,” Mike said, but his voice lost the ominous hitch it had been carrying, so Harvey counted a win. “Grammy raised me better than this.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Harvey offered, small conspiring grin firmly in place. Mike caught it -- another win -- and returned it alongside a rueful twist of lips and harsh scraping of both hands across his scalp.

“Deal.”

So Mike showered, and Harvey set him up with an old Harvard crew shirt and an ancient pair of sweatpants that have since faded to four shades a lighter blue than they were originally. (For all he’s heard his wardrobe described as “shameless clothing porn” (Donna, and they still had to have words about her acting skills) his collection isn’t actually as extensive as one might think, thanks to regular trips to goodwill, so he’d had to dip into his ‘sentimental pieces’ drawer to find anything that had a hope of fitting the kid’s skinny-ass frame.)

Dinner wound up being cheese omelets, and Mike had blurted “you _cook_?!” before blushing beet red and back-peddling as fast as his mouth would carry him. “I’m sorry. That was -- I mean--”

“ _Eat_ ,” Harvey ordered, gesturing with his fork at Mike’s untouched plate. “Then sleep. Anything you have to say can wait until you can say it with some semblance of coherency.”

Mike had blushed again, deeper that time, but did as he was told.

Or, well, almost. “I need to thank you,” he’d said, a few bites in. “That shouldn’t wait. So--”

“You’re welcome. Now eat. I swear you must have been one of the fussy kids who held out for the airplane noises.”

“Actually, I never got that. How does an adult humming actually make a kid want to eat?”

Harvey's response was an irritated growl (or, well, technically it was a hum; just a short, pointed, _guttural_ hum shoved though gritted teeth) that got his point across quite nicely.

“Eating!” Mike protested, but he was grinning while he said it. More, the grin lingered the whole way through -- and maybe Harvey wasn't so terrible at this after all.

After dinner Mike returned to the bathroom for his final ablutions while Harvey grabbed linens for the couch. He kept a set of twin sheets for just this purpose, no matter that he so rarely entertained overnight guests that weren’t also sharing his bed, but it was always better to be prepared. When he’d asked if Mike wanted him to tint the windows the kid had boggled a bit that Harvey’s windows actually had a remote-controlled tint feature before deciding that dawn made for the perfect alarm clock. Harvey chose to take him at his word.

“Coffee machine’s on a timer, so if you get up before it does you’ll have to either wait or go without. Help yourself to whatever for breakfast, just make sure you clean up afterward. I’ve got some old suits hanging in the office closet -- haven’t gotten around to donating them yet -- what? Don’t look at me like that. What did you _think_ I did with them? -- No, don’t answer that. Just do the world a favor and find something to wear tomorrow that _isn’t_ yesterday’s clothes. Now I’m going to bed -- anything else you need?”

Mike had _gaped_ at him. Harvey waited, eyebrow raised, as the kid's jaw worked uselessly for a beat before he recovered enough to speak.

“No,” he’d said, voice the hoarse whisper of the overwhelmed. “Nothing. Good night, Harvey.”

“Night.”

And that was that. He’d retreated to the master suite over the sound of Mike shuffling around, trying to get comfortable. Oh, Harvey stood by his original assessment, but first night in a new place on an unfamiliar surface could make for a rough time no matter where you were or what thread count you were sleeping on. He only hoped the kid’s exhaustion would win out. Then five minutes to rinse off and wash the gel from his hair and Harvey was crawling into his own bed, pausing only to note the odd lopsidedness that came from having ceded two of his own pillows to Mike before he shut the light and called it a (long) ( _terrible, horrible, no good, very bad_ ) day.

Even still, sleep had been a long time coming.

His thoughts kept straying to Mike, hopefully asleep, or nearly so, out there on his couch, and on the fact that he’d spent exponentially longer trying to rationalize the decision to bring the kid here than he did in actually deciding it. Because if he’s honest with himself (and he usually is, at least to the best of his knowledge) he’d made the decision the minute he’d ordered his GPS to direct him to SIUH, and the logic involved was just as sound then as it is now.

Funny how that didn’t exactly reassure him.

So he thought about how his sense of responsibility towards the kid has somehow overgrown the simple outlines of boss-employee, or senior partner-directly subordinate associate, or even mentor-student. He'd tried to pin down when exactly that happened, but he kept coming up blank, and he didn’t have the energy (or the mental cohesion, or the objectivity) to retread all his old decisions to see if he could figure out when the rationalization had started.

_Hello. My name is Harvey Specter, and I have a problem..._

Yeah... no.

So instead he thought of Jessica, what she might say to all of this, and he wondered if he’d ever given her this much grief. Wondered if she'd ever lain awake at night with _his_ uncertain fate weighing on her mind, and if she decided she actually cared about the little snot-nosed punk she found in the mail room before or after she drop-kicked him into Harvard Law. And he thought about Donna, the only other person at Pearson-Hardman that he could claim responsibility for, except that wasn’t a fair comparison because he knew Donna felt he had it backwards, that _she_ was one responsible for _him_ and not the other way around, and that was true enough in its own way that Harvey figured they both had the right of it.

And of course none of these thoughts were helpful, but for some reason there was a shadowed corner of his psyche that wore Mike Ross’ name tag, and for the life of him Harvey could not stop poking at it with the proverbial stick to see what new shape it took, because if nothing else Mike Ross was completely and totally 100% Harvey’s problem. Surprisingly, it was a problem that was getting both easier and harder to deal with as time went on -- and was that paradox, or just quintessential Mike?

Harvey had actually caught himself giving the matter some serious thought before common sense won out. And then he’d sighed, a deep, bone-weary sigh, and thought -- _fuck it_. And he thought -- “ _I’m Harvey Specter. I’m entitled to not give a damn about the fact that I apparently give a bigger damn than I ought._ ” And he thought it felt surprisingly good to admit it.

And somewhere between that thought and the next Harvey Specter fell asleep, and slept soundly the whole night through.

\--Which of course doesn’t change the fact that there’s still an associate passed out on his couch, even though it’s well passed dawn. Actually, it’s currently a little past the time that Harvey normally leaves for the office, and the fact that Mike’s still sleeping is the only reason he hasn’t left yet. For some reason, the decision of whether or not to wake the kid is proving a lot harder than it should be.

On the one hand, he knows that Mike definitely wants to be at his grandmother’s sickbed, and the sooner the better, besides. But on the other, neither dawn nor the sound of Harvey’s morning routine or even the smell of coffee have been enough to rouse him. On the other, Harvey knows that Mike’s been going short on sleep since the shit first hit the fan, and he wouldn't still be sleeping now if his body didn't need it. On the other, right now Mike’s sleeping with his head on the armrest, curled foetally around Harvey’s pillow, and the lines that were still there in the hospital have finally all smoothed out.

On the other, there are _new_ lines now, two of them running vaguely parallel down Mike’s cheeks. The tracks of dried tears, Harvey knows, just as he knows that their presence means the kid must have cried himself to sleep last night.

On the other, these loft-style walls are painfully thin, but even still his associate had cried himself to sleep last night while Harvey had lain awake not thirty feet away and _hadn’t known_.

The realization hits Harvey like a punch to the solar plexus, and that more than anything else is what makes the decision for him. Not the fact that Mike had obviously not wanted Harvey to hear, but the way Harvey is actually grateful that he hadn’t, because -- is he really that much of a coward?

Apparently he is.

Which, on balance, is actually a good thing to know. So much of last night was about Harvey pushing his own limits, seeking his own borders, that it’s actually a relief now that he’s found them. Or one of them, anyway. And in hindsight, it isn’t even all that surprising. And now that he knows where at least a few of his lines are he can start to position himself in relationship to them, and then he can take stock. _Know thy enemy_ , even and perhaps especially when thy enemy is nothing more than thine own flaws.

And better to be confronted with this now, when Mike can’t suffer for Harvey’s failure, than to run into it later and have the whole thing blow up in their faces. Minefields, after all.

He should probably stock up on flags.

For now though he settles for leaving a note stuck to the coffee machine -- Mike will see it eventually -- before leaving quietly through the front door.

  
- _fin_ -


End file.
